Farley designed a membership button for it the button was in constant demand among his readers for years. In May 1949, the first Black Stallion Club was founded, in Kentucky. His readers respond with passion, writing him thousands of letters and emails every year. The 21 Black Stallion and Island Stallion stories are still in print and selling steadily. Walter Farley's titles reached a grand total of 34. And older readers and adults have been gripped by his fictionalized biography of America's greatest Thoroughbred, Man O'War.

Farley's own children when they were too young to read his Stallion novels. Children of all ages have found Farley titles to enjoy, since many of the later stories were written for Mr. Farley went on to write many more stories about the two stallions, and about other horses as well. Farley's readers were just as delighted with this book as his others. Farley tried his hand at a story about a new boy, Steve Duncan, and a new horse, Flame, in THE ISLAND STALLION. This was followed by SON OF THE BLACK STALLION. Most of the time he was assigned to Yank, the army weekly magazine, and he was also trained in the Fourth Armored Division.Īfter the war Walter Farley resumed the adventures of Alec and the Black with THE BLACK STALLION RETURNS. Farley went into the US Army, where he spent the next five years. Farley to write more about Alec Ramsey and the Black. The appearance of THE BLACK STALLION in 1941 was hailed by enthusiastic boys and girls all over the country. He traveled and lived in Mexico, Hawaii, the South Seas, most of the South American countries, the Caribbean Islands, and Europe. He used his first advance to go traveling and after that hardly stopped longer than it took him to write another book. It was published by Random House when he was 26.

Walter Farley began to write his first book, THE BLACK STALLION, while he was a student at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School and Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania, andįinished it while he was an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Consequently, I received a good background in different kinds of horse training and the people associated with each.' He switched from runners to jumpers to show horses to trotters and pacers, then back to runners again. Farley recalled, 'and in a way I profited by it. 'He wasn't the most successful trainer of race horses,' Mr. But unlike most city children, he had little trouble gaining firsthand experience with horses-his uncle was a professional horseman, and Walter spent much of his time at the stables with him. Walter Farley's love for horses began when he was a small boy living in Syracuse, New York, and continued as he grew up in New York City, where his family moved.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley