Robert Michael Ballantyne

R. M. Ballantyne (April 24, 1825 - February 8, 1894) 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.

If ever there was a man who possessed a gem in the form of a daughter of nineteen, that man was Samuel Ravenshaw; and if ever there was a girl who owned a bluff, jovial, fiery, hot-tempered, irascible old father, that girl was Elsie Ravenshaw. Although a gem, Elsie was exceedingly imperfect. Had she been the reverse she would not have been worth writing about. Old Ravenshaw, as his familiars styled him, was a settler, if we may use such a term in reference to one who was, perhaps, among the most unsettled of men. He had settled with his family on the banks of the Red River. The colony on that river is now one of the frontier towns of Canada. At the time we write of, it was a mere oasis in the desert, not even an offshoot of civilisation, for it owed its existence chiefly to the fact that retiring servants of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company congregated there to spend the evening of life, far beyond the Canadian boundary, in the heart of that great wilderness where they had spent their working days, and on the borders of that grand prairie where the red man and the buffalo roamed at will, and the conventionalities of civilised life troubled them not.

"At mischief again, of course: always at it." Mrs Potter said this angrily, and with much emphasis, as she seized her son by the arm and dragged him out of a pool of dirty water, into which he had tumbled. "Always at mischief of one sort or another, he is," continued Mrs Potter, with increasing wrath, "morning, noon, and night-he is; tumblin' about an' smashin' things for ever he does; he'll break my heart at last-he will. There: take that " "That," which poor little Tommy was desired to take, was a sounding box on the ear, accompanied by a violent shake of the arm which would have drawn that limb out of its socket if the child's bones and muscles had not been very tightly strung together.

The Young Fur Traders Volume 1 By R. M. Ballantyne Follows the adventures of a young man called Charles Kennedy. Loosely autobiographical account of Ballantyne's own time with the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. Its success prompted a series of excellent stories of adventure for the young with which this prolific Scottish author's name is popularly associated. In the very center of the great continent of North America, far removed from the abodes of civilized men, and about twenty miles to the south of Lake Winnipeg, exists a colony composed of Indians, Scotsmen, and French-Canadians, which is known by the name of Red River Settlement. Although far removed from the civilized world, and containing within its precincts much that is savage and very little that is refined, Red River is quite a populous paradise, as compared with the desolate, solitary establishments of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean by R. M. Ballantyne. The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1858) is a novel written by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. One of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes, the story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck. The story is written as a first person narrative from the perspective of 15-year-old Ralph Rover, one of three boys shipwrecked on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island. Ralph tells the story retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure: "I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages."

Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh on 24 April 1825, the ninth of ten children and the youngest son, to Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776-1847) and his wife Anne (1786-1855). Alexander was a newspaper editor and printer in the family firm of "Ballantyne & Co" based at Paul's Works on the Canongate, and Robert's uncle James Ballantyne (1772-1833) was the printer for Scottish author Sir Walter Scott. In 1832-33 the family is known to have been living at 20 Fettes Row, in the northern New Town of Edinburgh. A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of 130,000, which led to a decline in the family's fortunes. Ballantyne went to Canada aged 16, and spent five years working for the Hudson's Bay Company. He traded with the local Native Americans for furs, which required him to travel by canoe and sleigh to the areas occupied by the modern-day provinces of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, experiences that formed the basis of his novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856). His longing for family and home during that period impressed him to start writing letters to his mother. Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired."

The Madman, Antonio Zeppa, is abandoned on Ratinga, an island in the Pacific, where there later appears a miserable ex-pirate called Richard Rosco. The two start up a sort of love-hate relationship. The natives put Rosco on a fire to burn him at the stake, but he is rescued by Zeppa, who carries him up to his cave in the mountains, and tends to his injured feet. Eventually a vessel calls at the island, with Zeppa's son on board. From then on the story winds to an end, with everyone who belongs there safely back home in Britain.

A beautiful island lying like a gem on the breast of the great Pacific-a coral reef surrounding, and a calm lagoon within, on the glass-like surface of which rests a most piratical-looking schooner. Such is the scene to which we invite our reader's attention for a little while. At the time of which we write it was an eminently peaceful scene. So still was the atmosphere, so unruffled the water, that the island and the piratical-looking schooner seemed to float in the centre of a duplex world, where every cloudlet in the blue above had its exact counterpart in the blue below. No sounds were heard save the dull roar of the breaker that fell, at long regular intervals, on the seaward side of the reef, and no motion was visible except the back-fin of a shark as it cut a line occasionally on the sea, or the stately sweep of an albatross, as it passed above the schooner's masts and cast a look of solemn inquiry upon her deck.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Writing during the latter half of the nineteenth century after studying original sources and acquainting himself personally with the lands and the remaining family of the outstanding discoverer of the previous century, Sir Alexander Mackensie, R. M. Ballantyne recounts for successive generations an interesting, accurate, and lively narrative of Mackensie's two great expeditions. Follow the stalwart and colorful band of pioneer discoverers on their journeys "by water and wood" across the far north of the American continent as they penetrate its inclement regions, meet its men, beasts, and physical elements, and venture across the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean or on to the Polar Sea. Though you can enjoy all this from your cozy armchair today, it may ignite within you a desire to leave your life of comfort and ease and to pioneer an expedition yourself We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience

The Coral Island is a novel written 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. The Coral Island tells the story of three sailor lads, Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin. When the threesome are are cast ashore after the storm, their first task is to find out whether The Coral Island is inhabited. Their next task is to find a way of staying alive. They go hunting and learn to fish, explore underwater caves and build boats - but then their island paradise is rudely disturbed by the arrival of pirates. William Golding's 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, was written as a response to this book, which is referenced at the end of Golding's story, when the naval officer says, "I know. Jolly good show. Like The Coral Island." Golding, despite enjoying the book many times as a child, massively disagreed with the views that The Coral Island held, and Lord of the Flies depicts the English boys as savages themselves. The Coral Island is also mentioned within the first four chapters of Lord of the Flies, when one of the English school boys says "it will be an adventure story, like Treasure Island, Coral Island." This edition of The Coral Island is unabridged.

The Madman, Antonio Zeppa, is abandoned on Ratinga, an island in the Pacific, where there later appears a miserable ex-pirate called Richard Rosco. The two start up a sort of love-hate relationship. The natives put Rosco on a fire to burn him at the stake, but he is rescued by Zeppa, who carries him up to his cave in the mountains, and tends to his injured feet. Eventually a vessel calls at the island, with Zeppa's son on board. From then on the story winds to an end, with everyone who belongs there safely back home in Britain

This is a tale of a Sea-rover, or Viking as they're called. In the author's own words: The present tale is founded chiefly on the information conveyed in that most interesting work by Snorro Sturleson 'The Heimskringla, or Chronicles of the Kings of Norway.' It is translated from the Icelandic. On perceiving the intention of the Danes to attack him, Erling's heart was glad, because he now felt sure that to some extent he had them in his power. If they had, on his first appearance, taken to their ships, they might have easily escaped, or some of the smaller vessels might have pulled up the river and attacked his ship, which, in that case, would have had to meet them on unequal terms; but, now that they were about to attack him on land, he knew that he could keep them in play as long as he pleased, and that if they should, on the appearance of reinforcements, again make for their ships, he could effectively harass them, and retard their embarkation.