Walter Farley

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.

Most of the novel takes place in New York City, albeit one of its less developed areas: Flushing, in the borough of Queens. The neighborhood is near the site of the 1939 World's Fair and the Belmont Park racetrack, an important venue for horse racing. This area up to the end of World War II still supported agriculture, including cows, horses and truck farming. After the War, the land was sold and eventually high rise apartments were built.

Farley also served as a reporter with the U.S. Army's 4th Armored Division during World War II, writing for Yank, an army publication.[3]

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.[4] In 1989 Farley was honored by his hometown library in Venice, Florida, which established the Walter Farley Literary Landmark in its children's wing. Farley died of cancer in October 1989, shortly before the publication of The Young Black Stallion, the twenty-first book in the series, and during production of the television series The Adventures of the Black Stallion.

• Finding aid to Walter Farley papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.