The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean

The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1858) is a novel written by Scottish juvenile fiction author R. M. Ballantyne at the height of the British Empire. The story relates the adventures of three boys marooned on a South Pacific island, the only survivors of a shipwreck. The book first went on sale late in 1857, and since then has never been out of print. A typical Robinsonade – a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe – and one of the most popular of its type, the novel is best remembered today as having been the inspiration for William Golding's dystopian The Lord of the Flies (1954). The Coral Island was voted one of the top-twenty Scottish novels at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference held in 2006.