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 later based 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 pressed on, and in 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 Deep Down he spent time with the tin miners of Cornwall.
A Greater London Council plaque commemorates Ballantyne at "Duneaves" on Mount Park Road in Harrow.
Read more about this topic: Robert Michael Ballantyne
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