Walter Farley

Walter Farley (born Walter Lorimer Farley, 26 June 1915 – 16 October 1989) was an American author, primarily of horse stories for children. His first and most famous work was The Black Stallion (1941). He wrote many sequels, and the series has been continued since his death by his son Steven. Farley was the son of Walter Patrick Farley and Isabelle "Belle" L. (Vermilyea) Farley. His uncle was a professional horseman and taught him various methods of horse training and about the advantages or disadvantages of each method. Farley began to write The Black Stallion while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. He finished it and had it published in 1941 while still an undergraduate at Columbia College of Columbia University, where he received a B.A. the same year. The USA part of the book was located in Flushing, Long Island, NY in a part of Queens that was near the World's Fair site in 1939. Part of the action took place on Colden Street, just a block or two from Main Street and only several blocks from the terminus of the Flushing subway line. This area up to the end of the 2nd World War had a number of actively working farm