American novelist, born at Rochester, NY, on the 16th of December 1861. Educated at Cornell University, he obtained the material for stories of frontier life contributed to the magazines from a residence in Colorado and Mexico. He was for some years allied with the firm of Lovell and Company, publishers, in New York, proceeding to England as their agent and literary adviser in 1888. Here he met and became the fast friend of Rudyard Kipling, who subsequently married his sister. The two collaborated in The Naulakha, an Indo-American story of love and adventure, wherein Kipling’s virile diction and Balestier’s delicacy of touch are in forceful contrast to each other. His novel, Benefits Forgot, was published posthumously by the Century Company in 1892. He died in Dresden, Saxony, on the 6th of December 1891. One of Kipling’s finest sets of verses is a tribute to Balestier’s memory.
