Book Giveaway!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am excited to announce a one-per-week book giveaway between now and the end of December! Each and every Monday between this date and the 27th of December, one of R. M. Ballantyne's novels will be awarded to the author of the most interesting, informative, or thought-provoking comment or question submitted to Ballantyne The Brave during the previous week. That's a total of five novels to be given away free of charge in the coming weeks! Your comments and questions can be submitted through our contact page, or email address, and I look forward to reading them!

The first book to be given away is R. M. Ballantyne's The Young Fur Traders, which was, suitably, his first boys' adventure novel.

5 Interesting facts about The Young Fur Traders:

1. As already mentioned, it was his first boys' adventure novel, and his debut in fictional literature.

2. Ballantyne originally titled the book Snowflakes and Sunbeams, with The Young Fur Traders as a subtitle, but his publisher disagreed with this choice and after three editions the original title was dropped entirely.

3. Many of the fictionalized experiences were drawn from Ballantyne's time in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the book has a "strong autobiographical flavour," as Eric Quayle said in his biography of Ballantyne.

4. All six illustrations in the first edition, plus the frontispiece and pictorial title, were drawn by Ballantyne.

5. As a naive author, Ballantyne sold the copyrights of The Young Fur Traders to his publishers, thus losing royalty rights for the subsequent dozens of editions.

Who will win? Come back next week to find out!

Tueri a vulnere,

John