R M Ballantyne: 313 books

This is the story of Jasper Derry, a Canadian trapper who is traveling to Fort Erie to marry his fiancé and begin a family. It includes John Heywood's adventure with a ferocious grizzly bear and the evil machinations of Darkeye, an Indian chief. A classic for young readers, ages about 12-16 or so,...

Excerpt: "The hour was midnight. This fact was indicated by the family clock—a Dutch one, with a face which had once been white, but was now become greenish yellow, probably from horror at the profanity of the artist who had painted a basket of unrecognisable fruit above it, an irate cockatoo...

This is one of the few Ballantynes that is written in first person narrative. This book follows a penniless, fatherless boy as he goes to sea to make money for his mother. It includes several educational parts about the harvesting of oil from whales. (Goodreads)

A teenaged boy that goes by "Ralph" is from a long family line seamen. As he gets older his desire for freedom on the sea grows. He is finally allowed to go to sea. He meets two other boys, Jack and Peterkin. Jack being older than Ralph, and Peterkin being younger than him. The three become...

This is the charming story of David Laidlaw, a young Scotsman who 'comes to Bawbylon' (which is actually London) and becomes unwittingly embroiled with criminals and blackguards of a mercenary sort. (Goodreads)

Excerpt: "Ships are, as it were, the electric sparks of the world, by means of which the superabundance of different countries is carried forth to fill, reciprocally, the voids in each. They are not only the media of intercourse between the various families of the human race, whereby our shores...

There is a voice in the waters of the great sea. It calls to man continually. Sometimes it thunders in the tempest, when the waves leap high and strong and the wild winds shriek and roar, as if to force our attention. Sometimes it whispers in the calm, and comes rippling on the shingly beach in a...

Excerpt: "Reader,—I take for granted that you are tolerably well acquainted with the different modes of life and travelling peculiar to European nations. I also presume that you know something of the inhabitants of the East; and, it may be, a good deal of the Americans in general. But I suspect—at...

Excerpt: "How long Tolly Trevor remained in a state of horrified surprise no one can tell, for he was incapable of observation at the time, besides being alone. On returning to consciousness he found himself galloping towards the exploded fortress at full speed, and did not draw rein till he...

(Excerpt): "Every one has heard of those ponies—those shaggy, chubby, innocent-looking little creatures—for which the world is indebted, we suppose, to Shetland. Well, once on a time, one of the most innocent-looking, chubbiest, and shaggiest of Shetland ponies—a dark brown one—stood...

(Excerpt): "On a dark November afternoon, not many years ago, Captain Boyns sat smoking his pipe in his own chimney-corner, gazing with a somewhat anxious expression at the fire. There was cause for anxiety, for there raged at the time one of the fiercest storms that ever blew on the shores of...