Author(s): Diana Harris

NZ Non Fiction

Johnny Jones: A Colonial Saga is the most up-to-date, comprehensive and personalised biography of the man since Alfred Eccles and A.H. Reed's John Jones of Otago: Whaler, Coloniser, Shipowner, Merchant (Reed, 1949). Jones was a true renaissance man, having had a hand in myriad enterprises during the early to mid 1800s - from sealing, whaling and ship-owning to trading, property investment and entrepreneurship - perhaps best known for establishing settlement in much of the east coast of the South Island in the 1840s. Famous for somewhat dogged determinism and an impetuous temper, it was ultimately these traits, as well as an uncompromising fairness in business dealings, that afforded him equal success and notoriety, and a place in New Zealand's early history.