He was a lepidopterist and published Saggio di un Catalogo dei Lepidotteri d’Italia between 1875 and 1889.
In the 1990s Boyd edited Nabokov’s English-language fiction and memoirs for the Library of America (3 vols., 1996) and, with lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle, Nabokov's writings on butterflies (Nabokov's Butterflies, 2000).
Robert Michael Pyle (born July 19, 1947 in Denver, Colorado) is a lepidopterist and author living in Grays River, Washington who has published twelve books and hundreds of papers, essays, stories and poems.