Author Ian Dougherty is getting used to explaining to people that his latest book, on James Brown, is not about the United States ‘godfather of soul’ but about the New Zealand godfather of cartooning.

Shooting Folly as it Flies: The Life and Lines of New Zealand’s First Political Cartoonist James Brown, includes a biography of the nineteenth century Dunedin engraver and artist, and reproduces and places in their historical context all of his surviving cartoons, many of which have not previously been published.

They constitute what the book describes as ‘a rare visual record of and a remarkable and enduring commentary on the factional and fickle world of settler politics in Dunedin and Otago in the 1850s and 1860s, which would have been duplicated in settlements throughout New Zealand.’

Dougherty is the author of 29 books on New Zealand history, biography, culture and society, including biographies of the southern folk hero, William James ‘Arawata Bill’ O’Leary; author, publisher and long-distance walker, A. H. Reed; social campaigner, Rutherford Waddell; and art forger Karl Sim.

Shooting Folly as it Flies is available for $35 from bookshops, and directly from the publisher (post-free): Saddle Hill Press, PO Box 90, Dunedin 9054, mobile phone 027 2480714, email saddlehillpress@xtra.co.nz.

ENDS

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