R. M. Ballantyne

Biography

Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825–1894) was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction who was one of the most popular and prolific adventure writers of the Victorian era. Born in Edinburgh to a family connected to the publishing trade, Ballantyne spent six years as a fur trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company in northern Canada (1841–1847), experiences that provided material for his first book and many subsequent adventures. He published over a hundred books during his career, with The Coral Island (1857) becoming his most famous and enduring work. His adventure stories—set in locations from the Arctic to the South Seas, from African jungles to the London fire brigade—were enormously popular with young Victorian readers and influenced subsequent adventure writers including Robert Louis Stevenson. Ballantyne was noted for his thorough research, often visiting the locations and experiencing the occupations he wrote about. His idealized portrayal of British boys triumphing through courage, resourcefulness, and Christian virtue in The Coral Island became so iconic that William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies (1954) as a deliberate counterpoint.