R. M. Ballantyne (1825 – 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 sixteen, 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.

He wrote over eighty books, including his most popular The Coral Island, which became inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island), J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

Annoyed by a mistake he made in The Coral Island - stating that coconuts were thin-skinned - Ballantyne raveled widely to gain first-hand knowledge and to research the backgrounds of his stories.

He spent three weeks on Bell Rock to write The Lighthouse (1865), and was for a short time a London fireman (Fighting the Flames 1867), and for Deep Down (1868) he lived with the tin-miners of St. Just for over three months.

He also experienced life as a fireman on board the tender of the London-to Edinburgh express and weeks on the Gull Lightship also gave material for his subsequent novels. Ballantyne was especially careful with the details of local flora and fauna.

Ballantyne died in Rome, Italy, on February 8, 1894.

Source - Wikipedia