Robert Michael Ballantyne

Robert Michael Ballantyne (24 April 1825–8 February 1894) was a Scottish author of children’s fiction. Ballantyne authored more than a hundred books, but is most famously remembered for his work, The Coral Island (1857). One of the great authors who was influenced by this novel was none other than Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94). In fact, Stevenson went on to base portions of his famous book Treasure Island from the themes that had impressed him in The Coral Island. The Coral Island is a typical Robinsonade – the genre of fiction that was inspired by Daniel Defoe’s famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, the survival story of a man who was shipwrecked on an island. The Coral Island is one of the most popular Robinsonades, narrating the adventures of three boys who become heroes after being the only survivors of a shipwreck on a South Pacific island. The book was first published in the year 1857, and has never been out of print since then. It also inspired another famous novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), by William Golding.