Robert Michael Ballantyne

Robert Michael Ballantyne

Robert Michael Ballantyne (born April 24, 1825 in Edinburgh , † February 8, 1894 in Rome ) was a Scottish writer and watercolor painter . He is also often cited as RM Ballantyne .

Life

Ballantyne was the youngest son of the publisher Alexander Thomson Ballantyne (1776–1847) and his wife Anne (1786–1855); his paternal uncle, James Ballantyne (1772-1833) ran a well-known printing company. By the stock market crash of 1825 the company was Ballantyne & Co. insolvent and had to sign bankruptcy.

In 1841 Ballantyne went to Canada and worked there for the Hudson's Bay Company until 1846 . His experiences and a. as a buyer for furs later formed a basis for some of his novels. Ballantyne returned to Scotland via New York in 1847.

Due to the political situation in Europe in 1848 some travel plans of Ballantynes ​​were shattered and so he was able to debut successfully with his work "Hudson's Bay" that year.

On July 31, 1866, Ballantyne married Jane Grant (1845-1924) in Edinburgh and had three daughters and three sons with her.

As a successful writer Ballantyne settled with his family in Harrow ( London ). In October 1893 he traveled to Rome, accompanied by one of his daughters, as the climate there seemed to be more conducive to his health. Robert Michael Ballantyne died of Menière's disease on February 8, 1894 and found his final resting place in the Protestant cemetery in Rome ( Testaccio ).

Honors

• In 1979 Ballantyne's former home on Mount Park Road (Harrow) was awarded Blue Plaque No. 461 by the Greater London Council .
• Robert Louis Stevenson adored u. a. Ballantyne as a great role model and set a monument to him in the introduction to the novel Treasure Island .

Works (selection)

Fiction

• The Hudson's Bay . Dodo Press, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-4065-5827-2 (EA London 1848).
• The gorilla hunters . 1861.
• The Red Eric . 1861.
  • German: The red Erich or the whale fish driver's last trip . Meinhold Verlag, Dresden 1864.
• Erling the bold . Dodo Press, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-4065-5818-0 (EA London 1869).
• The Coral Island. A tale of the Pacific Island . Garland, New York 1977, ISBN 0-8240-2280-7 (EA London 1858)
  • German: Under the spell of the coral island . German book club, Berlin 1858.
  • German: The coral island. the adventurous Robinson life of three cabin boys in the South Seas . Arena Verlag, Würzburg 1980, ISBN 3-401-03890-7 .
• The gorilla hunters .
  • German: On the gorilla hunt . Edition Hehke, Schönau 1999.

Non-fiction

• The lighthouse . 1865.
• The ocean and its wonders . 1874.
• The story of the rock . 1875.

literature

• Eric Quale: Ballantyne the brave. A Victorian writer and his family . Hart-Davis, London 1967.
• Eric Quale: RM Ballantyne. A bibliography of first editions . Dawsons of Pall Mall, London 1968.
• Neil Rennie: Robert Michael Ballantyne . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . London 2004.
• Thomas Seccombe: Robert Michael Ballantyne . In: Sidney Lee: Dictionary of National Biography / Supplement . London 1901.
• Karin Sigl: The Robinsonade tradition in Robert Michael Ballantyne's “The Coral Island” and William Golding 's “ The Lord of the Flies ” . Mellen Books, Lewiston, NY 1996, ISBN 0-7734-4210-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Named after the French doctor Prosper Menière (1799–1862).