Edward Robert Tregear, 1846–1931

Abstract

Like other figures in the literary history of colonial New Zealand, Edward Robert Tregear was an all-rounder whose very versatility probably prevented him from excelling in any one genre. In his lifetime, he was best known as a civil servant who championed the cause of labour. Yet Tregear also harboured serious literary aspirations, trying his hand at fiction, poetry, comparative linguistics, anthropology and political analysis. Some of this — notably the controversial Aryan Maori —is now valued only by the historically curious. Still, Tregear’s efforts in producing his Comparative Dictionary were little short of Herculean, while the remainder of his writing is always lucid and interesting, even though much of it is doomed to remain locked in the cabinets of archaeological curiosity.