William Ralston Balch

William Ralston Balch (pseudonym C. C. C.; December 9, 1852 – March 7, 1923) was an American journalist and author who wrote The Complete Compendium of Universal Knowledge, among other reference works. A supplemented edition of James Sanks Brisbin's biography of James A. Garfield, published in 1881, was credited wholly to him.

Biography Born on December 9, 1852 in Leetown, Virginia, he began his newspaper work in the composing room of the Concord Monitor as a boy in 1871. He was connected with the London Bureau of the Associated Press for several years. Balch was responsible for the raising of the $500,000 fund of the London Daily Mail during the Boer War. In this work he secured the co-operation of Rudyard Kipling, whose poem, "The Absent-minded Beggar," which he wrote especially for this cause, brought so much money into the office of the Mail that it was decided to found a veterans' hospital at Portsmouth, England. In 1884, he wrote a biography of Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine. Balch was the author of the War Chronicle in the columns of the Boston Evening Transcript during World War I. He died on March 7, 1923

On June 21, 1881, Balch married Elizabeth Singerly. They had one daughter. although it was only a republished edition of James Sanks Brisbin's biography of Garfield, to which Balch had presumably added chapters. Balch wrote other encyclopedias around the same time, including The People's Dictionary and Every-day Encyclopedia in 1883 and Ready Reference: The Universal Cyclopaedia Containing Everything that Everybody Wants to Know in 1901.