John Shaw served in the British Army in the 1860s and migrated to New South Wales around 1869. He ran a private school in Yass and married Frances Weaver there in 1871. They had a daughter the next year. Shaw edited the Yass Courier and later the Cumberland Mercury at Parramatta. From 1900 he edited the Cumberland Argus. Shaw wrote A Concise History of New South Wales : from the earliest times to the winning of responsible government (1883), a history primer for school children and he edited with L. M. Oakes the Oakshaw Annual of New South Wales (1897-1898).
E. Morris Miller's Australian Literature From Its Beginnings to 1935 (1940): 676 asserts that Shaw also wrote A Country Schoolmaster (1899) and was also 'Author of Golden Holcombes (Vickers, 1888) and The Actor's Daughter (Griffith, 1890); and of The Scotch-Irish in History as Master-builders of Empires, 1900.' It seems unlikely that he was the author of the last work. He definitely was not the author of A Country Schoolmaster (1899) which was written by the Reverend James Shaw of Scotland as confirmed in the full title of the work, A Country Schoolmaster, James Shaw and the biographical sketch by R. Wallace in the volume.
(Source: A Biographical Register, 1788-1939 : notes from the name index of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1987): 253 compiled and edited by H.J. Gibbney and Ann G. Smith).
