Ballantine was just 20 and attending school in England, in 1939, when she met and married 23-year-old Ian Ballantine, an American at the London School of Economics. They helped established the paperback market for science fiction, Westerns and other genres, releasing original works and reprints by J.R.R. Their most lucrative publications came in the 1950s and ‘60s, when they were running Ballantine Books. Betty Ballantine, the daughter of a British colonial officer, was born Elizabeth Jones in India in 1919. Betty Ballantine stepped in, handled the last chapter and “I, Libertine” went to print.

Source: Washington Post February 13, 2019 21:00 UTC