beetle’s elytra, and its darkness is augmented by

association with “black Hecate,” the queen

of witches.

These three examples span

more than 200 years, but an

entomologist is immediately

struck by how commonplace

large, evening-flying beetles

must have been to the writers,

and their audiences, to

acquire such symbolism. Big

beetles such as Geotrupes are no

longer very frequently seen or

heard, but in an era before

electric-light pollution, agricultural

intensification, and pesticides, they must

have been, in season, familiar and everyday

harbingers of twilight.

Other literary uses of beetles are more diverse.

Wordsworth (in 1802) discusses their detail under

magnification: “The beetle panoplied in gems and

gold, A mailed angel on a battle-day,” and Gregor

Samsa, the unfortunate protagonist of Franz

Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915), wakes up to find

himself transformed into a gigantic insect, which

is often interpreted or illustrated as a beetle.

More recently, M.G. Leonard’s popular Beetle

Boy trilogy of children’s books follows the

adventures of three children, Darkus, Virginia,

and Bertolt, and their beetle companions, Baxter,

Marvin, and Newton, as they try to rescue the

Natural History Museum director and save the

world from eco-terrorism.

above right | A stag beetle

from the 1491 medieval

treatise Hortus Sanitatis

(Garden of Health), which

attributes dubious medical

properties to its mandibles.

right | Battle of the Beetles, the

final book in The Beetle Boy

Trilogy. In modern children’s

literature, the insects are often

characters rather than just

background.