William Webb Spicer

William Webb Spicer (6 September 1820, Esher, Surrey – 28 April 1879, Notting Hill, London) was an Anglican rector and amateur botanist, economic entomologist, and naturalist. He is known for his 1878 book A Handbook of the Plants of Tasmania, which was the first locally printed handbook for Australian flora. Biography William Webb Spicer matriculated on 5 December 1838 at Christ Church, Oxford. He graduated there with B.A. in 1843 and M.A. in 1848. In 1846 he was ordained an Anglican priest at the Chapel of Farnham Castle in Surrey, by the Bishop of Winchester Charles Sumner. Spicer married in 1849. From 1850 to 1874 he was the rector at Itchen Abbas, Winchester. While living with his wife from February 1874 to March 1878 in Tasmania, Spicer engaged in church duties and philanthropy, gave lectures on natural history, collected plant specimens, and published several research papers, as well as A Handbook of the Plants of Tasmania. According to a 1878 Nature review of A Handbook of the Plants of Tasmania: