Betty Ballantine (born Elizabeth Jones; September 25, 1919 – February 12, 2019) was an American publisher, editor, and writer. She was born during the Raj to a British colonial family. After her marriage to Ian Ballantine in 1939, she moved to New York where they created Bantam Books in 1945 and established Ballantine Books in 1952. They became freelance publishers in the 1970s. Their son, Richard, was an author and journalist specializing in cycling topics.

Company

Ian and Betty Ballantine won one special World Fantasy Award for professional work in 1975 and another one shared with Joy Chant and other creators of The High Kings (Bantam, 1983), a reference book on the Matter of Britain that incorporates retellings. (It was also a runner-up in nonfiction Hugo and Locus Award categories.) Betty Ballantine received a Special Committee Award from the annual World Science Fiction Convention in 2006 and a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement from the World Fantasy Convention in 2007. The Ballantines were both inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008, with a shared citation.

Publications

Ballantine wrote the novel The Secret Oceans published by Bantam in 1994 (ISBN 0553096605) with illustrations by twelve artists.