SKEY (William).
The Pirate Chief, and the Mummy's Complaint, with Various Zealandian Poems.
An attractive copy of William Skey’s (1835-1900) The Pirate Chief … He arrived in New Zealand in 1860 as part of the gold rush and after two years trained in New Zealand in and to the Geological Survey of Otago and in 1865 helped establish the the Colonial Museum and the Geological Survey of New Zealand in Wellington where he remained for the rest of his career.
Skey’s other interest was poetry. DNZB described how he “would often stay late at the laboratory composing verse, which he printed himself on a small hand-press. Skey’s verses – many of them parodies of the works of Shakespeare and Milton – are deliciously awful” (DNZB). This collection includes many poems that feature New Zealand.
