Oh, now I know where I heard of Ballantyne! The Coral Island is the book that bugged William Golding so much that he wrote Lord of the Flies as a response: "This is what English schoolboys would REALLY act like if they got stranded on an island!"

I haven't actually read Lord of the Flies and don't really intend to, but somehow over the course of my life I've picked up a number of facts about it.