William Woon: Wesleyan Missionary Printer in Tonga & New Zealand

Cornishman, the Revd William Woon, 1803-1858, between 1830 and 1853 served as a Wesleyan missionary printer in Tonga and New Zealand using his day's advanced iron Albion and Columbian presses. Though not of the top rank of missionaries, his printing output was prodigious. In New Zealand it was second in importance only to that of another Cornishman, the Revd William Colenso of the Church Missionary Society, who had a similar eight year long printing career. Despite the oppressive heat and humidity, in Tonga, in two years Woon produced about 25,000 booklets of some 54,000 pages. In New Zealand between 1836 and 1844, from the Wesleyans' Mangungu press Woon produced some 60,000 items or around three million pages in the Maori language of New Testament Gospels, small booklets on divinity, first readers, school exercise books, class tickets, and farming almanacs, some of which are of particular importance for their literary preservation of distinctive Maori dialects. A genial and laid-back giant, Woon won the affection of his Maori charges, one Hokianga chief taking the baptised name of Wiremu Wunu (William Woon). But Woon died in 1858 believing his missionary work had been in vain.