Blue cloth binding with gilt title and sailor image on the spine and on the front board.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

A very desirable edition of this once extremely popular children’s book.
After the popular publication in early 1861 of Paul du Chaillu’s book Exploration in Equatorial Guinea which included passages on the hitherto little-known gorilla (or ‘ferocious wild men of the forest’), the publishers T. Nelson & Sons persuaded
Ballantyne to write a novel on the subject. Published in December 1861, The Gorilla Hunters incorporates the characters of Jack Martin, Ralph Rover, and Peterkin Gay who also appeared in Ballantyne’s most enduring novel Coral Island, published in 1858. Born in Edinburgh in 1825, Ballantyne joined the Hudson’s Bay Company at the age of 16 leaving Scotland for remote Canada and the tough world of fur trading. Following in the footsteps of his uncle who was the printer of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Ballantyne privately printed his first tale Hudson Bay, a story of  ‘every-day life in the wilds of North America’. It began a prolific career in which Ballantyne produced scores of adventure novels for children. Between 1856 until his death in 1894 Ballantyne produced two if not three books a year. With his global tales of derring-do and exciting stories of the fast-paced and ever-changing Victorian world, Ballantyne, Sutherland notes, “did for the English schoolboy’s geography what Henty did for history”.