Brian Sutton-Smith

In both cases play pretends to assist them in surmounting their Darwinian struggles for survival.

He trained as a teacher, completed a BA and MA, and was then awarded the first education PhD in New Zealand in 1954.

Sutton-Smith was the author of some 50 books, the most recent of which is The Ambiguity of Play, and some 350 scholarly articles.

Sutton-Smith is also the author of a series of novels about boys growing up in New Zealand in the 1930s, entitled Our Street, Smitty Does a Bunk, and The Cobbers.

Initially published in serial form in 1949 in the New Zealand School Journal, the stories created a national furor as Brian Sutton-Smith allegedly endorsed morally unacceptable behavior in them.