Walter Farley was an American author, primarily of horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 stories for children. Educated at Columbia

Columbia College of Columbia University

Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...

, where he received a B.A. in 1941, his first and most famous work was The Black Stallion

The Black Stallion

The Black Stallion, known as "the Black" or "Shêtân", is the title character from author Walter Farley's bestselling series about the stallion and his young owner, Alec Ramsay...

(1941). He wrote many sequels, and the series has been continued since his death by his son Steven.

Farley's uncle was a professional horseman and taught him various methods of horse training

Horse training

Horse training refers to a variety of practices that teach horses to perform certain behaviors when asked to do so by humans. Horses are trained to be manageable by humans for everyday care as well as for equestrian activities from horse racing to therapeutic horseback riding for people with...

 and about the advantages or disadvantages of each method. Mr. Farley began to write The Black Stallion while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School

Erasmus Hall High School

Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....

 and Mercersburg Academy

Mercersburg Academy

Mercersburg Academy is an independent, coeducational boarding school for grades 9-12 located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, United States. The school's mission is:...

 in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. He finished it and had it published in 1941 while still an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Farley and his wife, Rosemary, had four children—Pam, Alice, Steven and Tim—whom they raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and in a beach house in Florida. In 1989 Farley was honored by his hometown library in Venice, Florida

Venice, Florida

Venice is a city in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 estimates, the city had a population of 21,015. It is noted for its large snowbird population. Its newspaper is the Venice Gondolier Sun...

, which established the Walter Farley Literary Landmark in its children's wing. Farley died of cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 in October 1989, shortly before the publication of The Young Black Stallion, the twenty-first book in the Black Stallion series and after the start of production on the television series Adventures of the Black Stallion

Adventures of the Black Stallion

The Adventures of The Black Stallion is a television series that was loosely based on the movies The Black Stallion and The Black Stallion Returns , which starred Mickey Rooney and Richard Ian Cox, as a trainer and a teenaged horse racer. The series originally ran on The Family Channel from...

.

List of books in the Black Stallion series

• The Black Stallion
  The Black Stallion
  The Black Stallion, known as "the Black" or "Shêtân", is the title character from author Walter Farley's bestselling series about the stallion and his young owner, Alec Ramsay...
  
  (1941)
• The Black Stallion Returns (1945)
• Son of the Black Stallion (1947)
• The Island Stallion (1948)
• The Black Stallion and Satan (1949)
• The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt (1951)
• The Island Stallion's Fury (1951)
• The Black Stallion's Filly (1952)
• The Black Stallion Revolts (1953)
• The Black Stallion's Sulky Colt (1954)
• The Island Stallion Races (1955)
• The Black Stallion's Courage (1956)
• The Black Stallion Mystery (1957)
• The Horse-Tamer (1958)
• The Black Stallion and Flame (1960)
• The Black Stallion Challenged (1964)
• The Black Stallion's Ghost (1969)
• The Black Stallion and the Girl (1971)
• The Black Stallion Legend (1983)
• The Young Black Stallion (1989) (with Steven Farley)

Others

• Man o' War
• Big Black Horse (young children's easy-reader version of The Black Stallion)
• Little Black, A Pony
• Little Black Goes to the Circus
• The Little Black Pony Races
• The Horse That Swam Away
• Great Dane Thor
• Walter Farley's How to Stay Out of Trouble with Your Horse: Some Basic Safety Rules to Help You Enjoy Riding (1981) (nonfiction)