[3] Skeat the younger attended Highgate School from 1879 to 1885 and won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge where he studied classics and received an MA degree in 1891.
Skeat began to study both the urbanised Malay people living near the coast and the aboriginal tribes dwelling inland.
He prepared his first book in the years leading up to 1899, when he began to mount expeditions to the interior to study the anthropology and ethnography of Malays in areas beyond any marked European influence.
His friend and associate Charles Otto Blagden saw the book through publication; it dealt with Malay magic and appeared in 1900.
[6] Because of his travels in the Malay interior, Skeat became too seriously ill to remain in the British Colonial Service, so he retired to London.