Tackling Ballantyne

[Calenorn]

Fans of free youth adventure e-books will quickly encounter Robert Michael Ballantyne. There are a LOT of Ballantyne titles available at Gutenberg; over 100! I've tried to organize the Ballantyne catalog, grouping similar titles in bundles of five or six. I haven't read all of these, of course, but assigned categories based on a quick perusal of each, which is, I admit, a very subjective process. The categories certainly overlap; a pirate story is by definition also a nautical story. Some titles that weren't actually fiction, or that didn't fit any category, were omitted.

At any rate, here is my attempt. Each category might make a nice little omnibus e-book, don't you think?

Stories of Africa
• Blue Lights
• The Fugitives
• The Gorilla Hunters
• Hunting the Lions
• The Settler and the Savage
• Six Months at the Cape

Exploring The Arctic
• Chasing the Sun
• Fast in the Ice
• The Giant of the North
• Red Rooney
• The Walrus Hunters
• The World of Ice

The Canadian Wilds
• Away in the Wilderness
• The Big Otter
• Fort Desolation
• The Pioneers
• Ungava
• Wrecked but not Ruined

Dangerous Work
• Deep Down
• Fighting the Flames
• Life in the Red Brigade
• The Lively Poll
• The Young Trawler

Exploration (a bit of a catch-all)
• Lost in the Forest
• Martin Rattler
• Rivers of Ice
• The Rover of the Andes
• Under the Waves
• Up in the Clouds

Historical Fiction
• The Cannibal Islands
• Erling the Bold
• The Hot Swamp
• Hunted and Harried
• The Norsemen in the West

Maritime Tales (lifeboats, lighthouses, steamships, etc.)
• Battles with the Sea
• The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands
• In the Track of the Troops
• Jeff Benson
• Saved by the Lifeboat
• The Story of the Rock

Exploring Native America
• The Buffalo Runners
• Over the Rocky Mountains
• The Prairie Chief
• The Red Man's Revenge
• Silver Lake
• Twice Bought

Nautical Yarns (age of sail)
• The Battle and the Breeze
• Black Ivory
• The Crew of the Water Wagtail
• Fighting the Whales
• The Lifeboat
• Sunk at Sea

Pirate Tales (ARRRRR!!!!!)
• The Battery and the Boiler
• The Coral Island
• The Madman and the Pirate
• The Middy and the Moors
• The Pirate City

Sailing The South Seas
• Blown to Bits
• Gascoyne, The Sandal-Wood Trader
• The Island Queen
• Jarwin and Cuffy
• The Lonely Island
• The Red Eric

Western Adventures
• Charlie to the Rescue
• Digging for Gold
• The Dog Crusoe and His Master
• The Golden Dream
• Philosopher Jack
• The Wild Man of the West

[crich70]

Interesting. I think it would be just as easy to download the epubs that Charlie has uploaded and splice them together via Calibre though. I noticed that you are missing some titles in your list above as well.
Note: I found that not all of them are here at MR. Most of them, but about 7-8 in the list weren't. The separate collections seem to be 3.8-4mb a piece in epub format.

[Dr. Drib]

Or go here:

http://www.amazon.com/Delphi-Complet...lantyne+kindle

and for $2.51 get 84 novels and novellas in one package.

This is the fairly new Delphi collection.

[crich70]

Yeah, but it looks to be some 33 mb in size too which is a lot of space for one book. That's the one downside to Delphi Classic books I think. The size of the all in one file.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by crich70

Interesting. I think it would be just as easy to download the epubs that Charlie has uploaded and splice them together via Calibre though. I noticed that you are missing some titles in your list above as well.
Note: I found that not all of them are here at MR. Most of them, but about 7-8 in the list weren't. The separate collections seem to be 3.8-4mb a piece in epub format.

Thanks, Crich! I was working from the Gutenberg collection. Some of Ballantyne's work was non-fiction; I was trying to group similar novels together. As Dr. Drib found, a comprehensive omnibus is very large!

My e-book craftsmanship isn't polished enough to share with others; mostly I will tweak files to display better on my little Nook screen. But if someone else wanted to build some Ballantyne collections and share them here, I would gladly use them.

I may have a go at the Henty catalog next.

[Calenorn]

Didn't Delphi go out of business? Or are they just selling through Amazon these days?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

My e-book craftsmanship isn't polished enough to share with others; mostly I will tweak files to display better on my little Nook screen. But if someone else wanted to build some Ballantyne collections and share them here, I would gladly use them.

I got a good start on such a collection last night and uploaded 12 omnibus editions (using your suggested titles) to both epub and Kindle formats.
That still leaves another 10 books to make into omnibus editions (from books I found here at MR).

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

Didn't Delphi go out of business? Or are they just selling through Amazon these days?

Their website is back up, but apparently some of the links are not active.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by crich70

Yeah, but it looks to be some 33 mb in size too which is a lot of space for one book. That's the one downside to Delphi Classic books I think. The size of the all in one file.

They include numerous illustrations and many links, which may not be to one's liking.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

They include numerous illustrations and many links, which may not be to one's liking.

I don't mind illustrations. They do add to the interest of a good book, but it is possible for them to be big enough to make an otherwise small book large. I had that happen with the Alice in Wonderland books. The illustrations were so large that it was looking to be bigger than the 20 MB upload limit here at MR. I used a program to shrink the pics a bit and things went very well after that.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by crich70

I got a good start on such a collection last night and uploaded 12 omnibus editions (using your suggested titles) to both epub and Kindle formats.
That still leaves another 10 books to make into omnibus editions (from books I found here at MR).

Sha-ZAM!!!!!

Mr. Crich, you are a fast worker! Nice covers, too!

Thank you for putting those together.

Would you be interested in a similar project for G. A. Henty?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

Sha-ZAM!!!!!

Mr. Crich, you are a fast worker! Nice covers, too!

Thank you for putting those together.

Would you be interested in a similar project for G. A. Henty?

You're quite welcome. Sounds interesting. If you come up with headings for the Omnibus editions I'll see what I can do. There are 69 G.A. Henty books here at MR. I found that Project Gutenberg has another 27 books by Mr. Henty that aren't here at MR yet. That's a grand total of 96 books.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by crich70

You're quite welcome. Sounds interesting. If you come up with headings for the Omnibus editions I'll see what I can do. There are 69 G.A. Henty books here at MR. I found that Project Gutenberg has another 27 books by Mr. Henty that aren't here at MR yet. That's a grand total of 96 books.

The Henty list will take some time. British history isn't my strong suit!

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

The Henty list will take some time. British history isn't my strong suit!

No worries. It's not my strongest subject either. Some are pretty obvious though such as the burning of London in 1666.

[Katsunami]

I understand that R.M. Ballantyne and G.A. Henty are adventure story writers? In that case, I think I'll pick them up

DelphiClassics just released a G.A. Henty compilation:

http://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/g-a-henty/

edit: I've bought four books at Delphi:

R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Zane Grey
G. A. Henty

They cost just over $12, and qualify for the 15% code MERRYBEE, which may be used if a purchase costs at least $10. The site functions fine, but as one of the Baldur's Gate merchants used to say with a fat Irish accent: "Business is dreadfully slow lately." Finding, carting, buying, and downloading these four books cost me almost 30 minutes. So, add one at a time and be patient