Biographical Background and Publication
Ballantyne never visited the coral islands of the South Pacific, relying instead on the accounts of others that were then beginning to emerge in Britain, which he exaggerated for theatrical effect by including "plenty of gore and violence meant to titillate his juvenile readership". He wrote The Coral Island while staying in a house on the Burntisland seafront, opposite Edinburgh on the Firth of Forth, and according to Ballantyne biographer Eric Quayle borrowed extensively from an 1852 novel by the American author James F. Bowman, The Island Home. Ballantyne's ignorance of the South Pacific caused him to erroneously describe coconuts as being soft and easily opened. A stickler for accuracy, he subsequently only wrote about things of which he had personal experience.
The first edition is dated 1858, although it was on sale in bookshops from early December 1857; dating books forward was a common practice at the time, especially during the Christmas period. The novel has subsequently never been out of print.
The Coral Island is Ballantyne's third novel. He was an "immensely prolific" author who wrote more than 100 books in his 40-year career, three of them published in 1858, the year of The Coral Island. Ballantyne had a "deep religious conviction" and felt it his duty to educate Victorian middle-class boys – his target audience – in "codes of honour, decency, and religiosity".
Read more about this topic: The Coral Island
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