Robert Michael Ballantyne
Encyclopedia
R. M. Ballantyne was a Scottish juvenile fiction
writer.
Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh
, he was part of a famous family of printers
and publishers. At the age of 16 he went to Canada
and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company
. He returned to Scotland
in 1847, and published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable
, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature
, and began the series of adventure
stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.
The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island
(1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described.
Ballantyne was also an accomplished artist
, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy
. He lived in later years at Harrow
, and died in Rome
, Italy
, where he had gone to attempt to shake off the results of overwork. He wrote a volume of Personal Reminiscences of Book Making (1893).
When Eric Quayle, author of Ballantyne the Brave
, penned these words in 1967, the works of R.M. Ballantyne were still well known. Today this is much less the case.
Born into a family of literature, Robert was the son of newspaper editor and printer Sandy Ballantyne. He was also the nephew of James Ballantyne
the printer for Scotland's most famous literary author, Sir Walter Scott. Robert grew up in and around the home of Scott, and one can only imagine the influence this relationship had on the future author.
Some bad financial investments made by Scott and Sandy Ballantyne would cause the family's ruin and Ballantyne's life would be changed forever.
His longing for family and home impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. This was the beginning of a long love of writing. Ballantyne would later recall in his Personal Reminiscences of Book Making, "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."
In 1847 he returned to Scotland to find out that his father was dead. The news was devastating, but he would press on, and in the year 1857 he published his first great work, The Coral Island
. Nevertheless, because of one mistake he had made in The Coral Island
, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, Ballantyne would travel all over the world to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter and to research the backgrounds of his stories. For example, he served for a while as a London
fireman
while researching Fighting the Flames. For his great book Deep Down he spent time with the tin
miners of Cornwall
.
R.M. Ballantyne also believed in firm manly friendships in boys. He knew how important it is for boys to have good wholesome friends. In almost all his books, he sets his characters around other young men or even older men who speak into their lives.
Ballantyne had few important friendships when he was a boy, so he understood all the more just how important they were. Some people have criticized him for his Scottish Covenanter
/Reformation
theology
and perspective on life. Others have complained about his so-called "puritanism
" found in all his books. But rather than being points of criticism, it is Ballantyne's strong theology which sets him apart from so many other authors.
During his life he would write over 80 books. In 1866 he married Jane Dickson Grant. They had four sons and two daughters. Ballantyne died in Rome, Italy, on 8 February 1894.
One of the young men directly touched by Ballantyne was Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850–1894). This young man was so impressed with the story of The Coral Island
(1857) that he would later base portions of his famous book Treasure Island
(1881) on themes found in Ballantyne. In fact, he honored Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island with the following poem:
Young adult literature
Young-adult fiction or young adult literature , also juvenile fiction, is fiction written for, published for, or marketed to adolescents and young adults, roughly ages 14 to 21. The Young Adult Library Services of the American Library Association defines a young adult as "someone between the...
writer.
Born Robert Michael Ballantyne in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, he was part of a famous family of printers
Printer (publisher)
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses. With the invention of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450, printing—and printers—proliferated throughout Europe.Today, printers are found...
and publishers. At the age of 16 he went to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
. He returned to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in 1847, and published his first book the following year, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable
Constable & Robinson
Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an independent British book publisher of fiction and non-fiction works. Founded in Edinburgh in 1795 by Archibald Constable as Constable & Co. it is probably the oldest independent publisher in the English-speaking world still operating under the name of its...
, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, and began the series of adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
stories for the young with which his name is popularly associated.
The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island
The Coral Island
The Coral Island is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne during the peak of the British Empire. It was voted as one of the top twenty Scottish novels in the 2006 15th International World Wide Web Conference....
(1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described.
Ballantyne was also an accomplished artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy
Royal Scottish Academy
The Royal Scottish Academy is a Scottish organisation that promotes contemporary Scottish art. Founded in 1826, as the Royal Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts, the RSA maintains a unique position in Scotland as an independently funded institution led by eminent artists and...
. He lived in later years at Harrow
Harrow, London
Harrow is an area in the London Borough of Harrow, northwest London, United Kingdom. It is a suburban area and is situated 12.2 miles northwest of Charing Cross...
, and died in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where he had gone to attempt to shake off the results of overwork. He wrote a volume of Personal Reminiscences of Book Making (1893).
When Eric Quayle, author of Ballantyne the Brave
Ballantyne the Brave
Ballantyne the Brave: A Victorian Writer and his Family, by Eric Quayle, is a biography of the boys' adventure writer, R. M. Ballantyne. Quayle has done extensive research among Ballantyne's papers and manuscripts, and presents a detailed biography. The book is out of print....
, penned these words in 1967, the works of R.M. Ballantyne were still well known. Today this is much less the case.
Born into a family of literature, Robert was the son of newspaper editor and printer Sandy Ballantyne. He was also the nephew of James Ballantyne
James Ballantyne
James Ballantyne was an editor and publisher who worked for his friend Sir Walter Scott. His brother John Ballantyne was also with the publishing firm, which is noted for the publication of the Novelist's Library , and many works edited or written by Scott.Scott nicknamed both brothers after...
the printer for Scotland's most famous literary author, Sir Walter Scott. Robert grew up in and around the home of Scott, and one can only imagine the influence this relationship had on the future author.
Some bad financial investments made by Scott and Sandy Ballantyne would cause the family's ruin and Ballantyne's life would be changed forever.
Biography
From the age of 16 to 22, Robert was hired to work in Canada by the Hudson's Bay Company. There he would trade with the local Native Americans and trappers in some of the most remote regions described as "the wilds of Canada". He would later base his book Snowflakes and Sunbeams on his adventures.His longing for family and home impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. This was the beginning of a long love of writing. Ballantyne would later recall in his Personal Reminiscences of Book Making, "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."
In 1847 he returned to Scotland to find out that his father was dead. The news was devastating, but he would press on, and in the year 1857 he published his first great work, The Coral Island
The Coral Island
The Coral Island is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne during the peak of the British Empire. It was voted as one of the top twenty Scottish novels in the 2006 15th International World Wide Web Conference....
. Nevertheless, because of one mistake he had made in The Coral Island
The Coral Island
The Coral Island is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne during the peak of the British Empire. It was voted as one of the top twenty Scottish novels in the 2006 15th International World Wide Web Conference....
, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, Ballantyne would travel all over the world to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter and to research the backgrounds of his stories. For example, he served for a while as a London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
fireman
Firefighter
Firefighters are rescuers extensively trained primarily to put out hazardous fires that threaten civilian populations and property, to rescue people from car incidents, collapsed and burning buildings and other such situations...
while researching Fighting the Flames. For his great book Deep Down he spent time with the tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
miners of Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
.
Manhood
Ballantyne felt that the old saying "boys will be boys" was not correct. Instead, he believed that boys must be trained up from boys to be true men and not just left on their own "to be boys". He said:
"Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system.... They ought to practice leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man's career with cool, cautious self-possession... -R.M. Ballantyne, The Gorilla Hunters
R.M. Ballantyne also believed in firm manly friendships in boys. He knew how important it is for boys to have good wholesome friends. In almost all his books, he sets his characters around other young men or even older men who speak into their lives.
Ballantyne had few important friendships when he was a boy, so he understood all the more just how important they were. Some people have criticized him for his Scottish Covenanter
Covenanter
The Covenanters were a Scottish Presbyterian movement that played an important part in the history of Scotland, and to a lesser extent in that of England and Ireland, during the 17th century...
/Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and perspective on life. Others have complained about his so-called "puritanism
Religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism is fanaticism related to a person's, or a group's, devotion to a religion. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. What constitutes fanaticism in another's behavior or belief is determined by the...
" found in all his books. But rather than being points of criticism, it is Ballantyne's strong theology which sets him apart from so many other authors.
During his life he would write over 80 books. In 1866 he married Jane Dickson Grant. They had four sons and two daughters. Ballantyne died in Rome, Italy, on 8 February 1894.
One of the young men directly touched by Ballantyne was Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
(1850–1894). This young man was so impressed with the story of The Coral Island
The Coral Island
The Coral Island is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne during the peak of the British Empire. It was voted as one of the top twenty Scottish novels in the 2006 15th International World Wide Web Conference....
(1857) that he would later base portions of his famous book Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
(1881) on themes found in Ballantyne. In fact, he honored Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island with the following poem:
- To the Hesitating Purchaser
- If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
- Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
- If schooners, islands, and maroons,
- And buccaneers, and buried gold,
- And all the old romance, retold
- Exactly in the ancient way,
- Can please, as me they pleased of old,
- The wiser youngsters of today:
- So be it, and fall on! If not,
- If studious youth no longer crave,
- His ancient appetites forgot,
- Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
- Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
- So be it, also! And may I
- And all my pirates share the grave
- Where these and their creations lie!
Slavery
Ballantyne was an opponent of the slave trade, stating that:Works
- The Hudson's Bay Company (1848)
- The Young Fur Traders (1856)
- Mister Fox. A Children's Nursery Rhyme (1856)
- The Coral IslandThe Coral IslandThe Coral Island is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne during the peak of the British Empire. It was voted as one of the top twenty Scottish novels in the 2006 15th International World Wide Web Conference....
(1857) - Ungava (1858)
- Martin Rattler (1858)
- Handbook to the new Goldfields (1858)
- The Dog Crusoe and his Master (1860)
- The World of Ice (1860)
- The Gorilla Hunters(1861)
- The Golden Dream (1861)
- The Red Eric (1861)
- Away in the Wilderness (1863)
- Fighting the Whales (1863)
- The Wild Man of the West (1863)
- Man on the Ocean (1863)
- Fast in the Ice (1863)
- Gascoyne (1864)
- The Lifeboat (1864)
- Chasing the Sun (1864)
- Freaks on the Fells (1864)
- The Lighthouse (1865)
- Fighting The Flames (1867)
- Silver Lake (1867)
- Deep Down (1868)
- Shifting Winds (1868)
- Hunting the Lions (1869)
- Over the Rocky Mountains (1869)
- Saved by the Lifeboat (1869)
- Erling the Bold (1869)
- The Battle and the Breeze (1869)
- Up in the Clouds (1869)
- The Cannibal Islands (1869)
- Lost in the Forest (1869)
- Digging for Gold (1869)
- Sunk at Sea (1869)
- The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands (1870)
- The Iron Horse (1879)
- The Norsemen in the West (1872)
- The Pioneers (1872)
- Black Ivory (1873)
- Life in the Red Brigade (1873)
- Fort Desolation (1873)
- The Ocean and its Wonders (1874)
- The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast (1874)
- The Story of the Rock (1875)
- Rivers of Ice (1875)
- Under the Waves (1876)
- The Settler and the Savage (1877)
- In the Track of the Troops (1878)
- Jarwin and Cuffy (1878)
- Philosopher Jack (1879)
- Six Months at the Cape (1879)
- Post Haste (1880)
- The Lonely Island (1880)
- The Red Man's Revenge (1880)
- My Doggie and I (1881)
- The Life of a Ship (1882)
- The Kitten Pilgrims (1882)
- The Giant of the North (1882)
- The Madman and the Pirate (1883)
- Battles with the Sea (1883)
- The Battery and the Boiler (1883)
- The Thorogood Family (1883)
- The Young Trawler (1884)
- Dusty Diamonds, Cut and Polished (1884)
- Twice Bought (1885)
- The Island Queen (1885)
- The Rover of the Andes (1885)
- The Prairie Chief (1886)
- The Lively Poll (1886)
- Red Rooney (1886)
- The Big Otter (1887)
- The Fugitives (1887)
- Blue Lights (1888)
- The Middy and the Moors (1888)
- The Eagle Cliff (1889)
- The Crew of the Water Wagtail (1889)
- Blown to Bits (1889)
- The Garret and the Garden (1890)
- Jeff Benson (1890)
- Charlie to the Rescue (1890)
- The Coxswain's Bride (1891)
- The Buffalo Runners (1891)
- The Hot Swamp (1892)
- Hunted and Harried (1892)
- The Walrus Hunters (1893)
- An Author's Adventures (1893)
- Wrecked but not Ruined (1895)