[2] A UK-wide banking crisis in 1825 resulted in the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business the following year with debts of £130,000,[4] which led to a decline in the family's fortunes.

Ballantyne recalled in his autobiographical Personal Reminiscences in Book Making (1893) that "To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired.

[1] The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and more than 100 other books followed in regular succession, his rule being to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described.

[6] The Coral Island is the most popular of the Ballantyne novels still read and remembered today,[7] but because of one mistake he made in that book, in which he gave an incorrect thickness of coconut shells, he subsequently attempted to gain first-hand knowledge of his subject matter.

[8] They were printed by Thomas Nelson and Sons in illustrated editions with verse versions (in the case of The Butterfly's Ball by William Roscoe and My Mother by Ann Taylor) and musical arrangements for piano and for a duet with a child.

Edgar Giberne (24 June 1850 – 21 September 1889)[12] provided five illustrations for The Blue Lights or Hot Work in the Soudan: A tale of Soldier life in Several of its Phases by Ballantyne (J Nisbet & Co, London, 1888)[13] Bibliography