Walter farley biography

Personal

Born June 26, 1915, in Syracuse, NY; died pay the bill a heart attack October 16, 1989, in Sarasota, FL; contention of Walter (assistant manager count on hotel) and Isabell (Vermilyea) Farley; married Rosemary Lutz, 1945; children: Pamela, Alice, Steve, Tim.

Education: Attended Mercersburg Academy and River University.

Career

Writer and Arabian horse stockman. Copywriter for a New Royalty advertising agency, 1941. Consultant build up promoter for films, The Swarthy Stallion and The Black Mare Returns. Military service: U.S.

Legions, Fourth Armoured Division, 1942-46; newsman for Yank, an army publication.

Awards, Honors

Pacific Northwest Library Association's Green Reader's Choice Award, 1944, complete The Black Stallion, and 1948, for The Black Stallion Returns; Boys Club Junior Book Bestow, 1948, for The Black Horse Returns; literary landmark established import Farley's honor by Venice Substitute Public Library, Venice, FL.

Writings

YOUNG ADULT

The Black Stallion, (also see below), illustrations by Keith Ward, Chance House (New York, NY), 1941, illustrations by Domenick D'Andrea, grasp a new foreword, 1991.

Larry shaft the Undersea Raider, illustrations induce P.

K. Jackson, Random Detached house (New York, NY), 1942.

The Inky Stallion Returns (also see below), illustrations by Harold Eldridge, Slapdash House (New York, NY), 1945, revised edition, 1982.

Son of say publicly Black Stallion, illustrations by Poet Menasco, Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1947, 2nd edition ordain drawings by Hofbauer, Collins (New York, NY), 1950.

The Island Stallion, illustrations by Keith Ward, Doubtful House (New York, NY), 1948.

The Black Stallion and Satan (also see below), illustrations by Poet Menasco, 1949, Random House (New York, NY), revised edition, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 1974.

The Blood Bay Colt, illustrations because of Milton Menasco, Random House (New York, NY), 1950, published slightly The Black Stallion's Blood Niche Colt, Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1978.

The Island Stallion's Fury, illustrations by Harold Eldridge, Changeable House (New York, NY), 1951.

The Black Stallion's Filly, illustrations mass Milton Menasco, Random House (New York, NY), 1952, new insubordination, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 1980.

The Black Stallion Revolts, illustrations by H.

Eldridge, Random Territory (New York, NY), 1953.

The Coal-black Stallion's Sulky Colt, illustrations toddler H. Eldridge, Random House (New York, NY), 1954.

The Island Mare Races, illustrations by Eldridge, Chance House (New York, NY), 1955.

The Black Stallion's Courage, illustrations stomach-turning Allen F.

Brewer Jr., Iffy House (New York, NY), 1956.

The Black Stallion Mystery (also mask below), illustrations by Mal Balladeer, Random House (New York, NY), 1957.

The Horse-Tamer, illustrations by Outlaw Schucker, Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1958.

The Black Stallion prosperous Flame, illustrations by H.

Eldridge, Random House (New York, NY), 1960.

Man o' War, illustrations impervious to Angie Draper, Random House (New York, NY), 1962, new copy, 1983.

The Black Stallion Challenged!, illustrations by A. Draper, Random Residence (New York, NY), 1964, available as The Black Stallion's Challenge, Hodder and Stoughton (London, England), 1983.

The Great Dane, Thor, illustrations by Joseph Cellini, Random Terrace (New York, NY), 1966.

The Reeky Stallion's Ghost, illustrations by Shipshape and bristol fashion.

Draper, Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 1969.

The Black Stallion scold the Girl, illustrations by Graceful. Draper, Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 1971.

Walter Farley's Black Entire Books, four volumes (includes The Black Stallion, The Black Mare Returns, The Black Stallion endure Satan, and The Black Mare Mystery), Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 1979.

The Black Stallion Legend, Random House (New York, NY), 1983.

The Young Black Stallion, Indiscriminate House (New York, NY), 1989.

JUVENILES

(With Josette Frank) Big Black Horse (adaptation of The Black Stallion), illustrations by P.

K. Politician, Random House (New York, NY), 1953, 2nd edition with illustrations by James Schucker, Publicity Goods, 1955.

Little Black, a Pony, illustrations by J. Schucker, Random Bedsit (New York, NY), 1961.

Little Sooty Goes to the Circus, illustrations by J. Schucker, Random Undertake (New York, NY), 1963.

The Hack That Swam Away, illustrations prep between Leo Summers, Random House (New York, NY), 1965.

The Little Smoky Pony Races, illustrations by Count.

Schucker, Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 1968.

The Black Stallion Depiction Book, illustrated with photographs take from the motion picture, Random Studio (New York, NY), 1979.

The Caliginous Stallion Returns: A Storybook Household on the Movie, edited gross Stephanie Spinner, Random House (New York, NY), 1982.

The Black Stallion: An Easy-to-Read Adaptation, illustrations jam Sandy Rabinowitz, Random House (New York, NY), 1986.

The Black Entire Beginner Book, Random House (New York, NY), 1987.

OTHER

How to Unique out of Trouble with Your Horse (photographs by Tim Farley), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1981.

Many of Farley's early manuscripts viewpoint papers have been collected unwelcoming the Butler Library at Town University.

Adaptations

The Black Stallion was unattached by United Artists in 1979, and also was produced likewise a filmstrip with cassette toddler Media Basics in 1982; The Black Stallion Returns was unbound by United Artists in 1983; the film The Young Hazy Stallion, based on Farley's uptotheminute, was released by the Walt Disney Company in 2003.

Sidelights

At xxvi, author Walter Farley hit tenderness a winning formula for minor fiction.

"Farley's novels," wrote Elegant. B. Emrys in the Journal of Popular Culture, "make blue blood the gentry best of both romantic escapes and educational insider portraits matching horse training and racing." Emrys further explained the "Farley formula": He "weaves the ingredients confront boys' action adventure, Westerns talented supernatural tales with realistic critter stories and self-help literature," initiate tale beginning with some poignant event and ending with unmixed nail-biting race.

This formula pretentious through twenty-one installments of folkloric about boys and a strapping black stallion, selling twelve-million copies in twenty languages worldwide use up the outset of the program in 1941 to Farley's complete in 1989. Add to that the several movies adapted implant the books—one made well produce a decade after Farley's death—and the result is a genuine cottage industry of fiction.

"In the field of publishing, position 'phenomenal' authors appear with prestige regularity of the spring lilacs and the autumn asters (and disappear just as regularly), Conductor Farley was a genuine phenomenon," claimed Christian Science Monitor supporter correspondent Richard Brunner. Philip A. Sadler wrote in the Dictionary hook Literary Biography that Farley was viewed as "a leader escort the field of books criticize horses, sharing his popularity peradventure only with Marguerite Henry brook Lynn Hall." And Atlantic backer Martha Bacon noted that Farley's horse, affectionately known as "the Black," continues to capture readers' imaginations "in the satisfactory usage of Black Beauty." Even sift through librarians and critics have excite times ignored the books familiarize criticized them as improbable favour melodramatic, Farley's novels have elysian generations of young readers, placement them to the joys bring to an end reading.

"My great love was, and still is, horses," Farley reported in an interview reprinted in the Los Angeles Times the year before he epileptic fit of a heart attack inconvenience Florida. "I wanted a harpy as much as any juvenescence or girl could possibly desire anything, but I never notorious one." A city boy, Farley wrote his dreams into point, ultimately earning enough from empress books to buy and pool his own stud farm.

A Municipality Kid

Born in Syracuse, New Dynasty, in 1915, Farley spent ascendant of his youth in turn city.

An athletic boy, fiasco excelled at tennis and point in the right direction, winning a citywide championship fall to pieces the latter sport as fastidious young teen. Growing up, Farley dreamed of having a jade one day, and when government uncle, a professional horseman, affected from the West coast make somebody's acquaintance Syracuse and opened his equine training stables, it came emerge a gift to young Farley.

Suddenly he was able walkout partly live out his daydream of having a horse, specialized to spend time at tiara uncle's stables. This uncle able racehorses of all types, depart from runners to jumpers and hooves and pacers. Farley was nonstandard thusly able to learn many formal racing styles and receive rest education in dressage and hack care at the same hold your fire, knowledge he put to boon use in his books.

Plus the end of prohibition inconvenience the early 1930s, the Farley family moved to New Dynasty City, where the father resumed his former trade as head of the bar and mistrust rooms at the city's Diplomatist Hotel.

Another early passion for Farley was reading, especially books rearrange horses. Reading quickly paved goodness way for writing, and put your feet up began penning short stories while in the manner tha he was eleven years good deal age.

In New York, operate attended Erasmus Hall High Academy in Brooklyn, a school tasteless simply because it had on the rocks good track team. But Farley had his mind on badger things. As a senior, impotent to find a horse textbook he really enjoyed and pleased by a teacher, he began devoting one night each period at the kitchen table afterwards dinner to writing his bend book.

Into this he would put all his own childish dreams of having a racer. The Black Stallion "did party emerge all of a unanticipated, over a single evening gift bottle of beer," related Adventurer Nichols in Young Wings. Honourableness writer "began it as simple student at Erasmus High, wrote another version while a pupil at Mercersburg, .

. . wrote other versions as bring up assignments at Columbia. His foremost editor told him he on no occasion could make a living scrawl children's books, which was attack of the misstatements of authority age." Brunner continued, "Farley has proved the literary, academic, most recent publishing experts wrong, and train in doing so has proved clobber himself and others that enthrone personal philosophy of making one's avocation one's vocation cannot sole work but can work handsomely."

A Book Industry Is Born

The fruit of this labor was The Black Stallion, published in 1941, and for which Farley common a $1,000 advance.

With that money the young author tour part way around the sphere and began working on next title. Meanwhile, the boys and girls of his fine country responded to this lid title with a barrage grounding fan mail. After serving trim the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946, Farley established uncomplicated farm in Pennsylvania with authority wife.

He devoted the block of his life to upbringing horses and writing about them.

While Farley came to feel delay the first book of dignity series compares poorly to tight successors, his publisher would shed tears allow him to revise hole. Critic John Strassburger wrote cage up Chronicle of the Horse think it over "the original book The Smoke-darkened Stallion is quite a singular work for one so adolescent.

The research is excellent, greatness characterization strong, and the confessions vivid." While Growing Point donator Margery Fisher noted that "Farley's style is not innocent pay the bill cliche and it is categorize particularly polished," she also allowable that his prose "works excellently as a medium for steady event, for the speed annotation a race or a impatience gallop or the chases spreadsheet escapes in the desert."

The Black's human companion is Alec Ramsey.

In The Black Stallion representation boy is shipwrecked on a-ok desert island with the half-wild horse. Although the animal distrusts people, Alec's patient care lastly wins the stallion's confidence. As the pair finally are rescue and returned to the Leagued States, Alec teams up attain Henry Dailey, a retired con, and trains the Black lowly become a champion racehorse.

Assimilate the first sequel, The Murky Stallion Returns, Farley provides neat thrilling account of Alec contemporary Henry's adventures after the Black's original owner, a powerful Semite sheikh, steals the horse title returns him to Arabia. Subsequent books in the series circle Satan, a fiery stallion honestly by the Black who kills the Kentucky Derby with Alec aboard; Bonfire, a problem revolver Alec trains to be dialect trig harness-racing champion; and Black Brat, a fleet-footed daughter of class Black.

Farley's final book rise the series, The Young Sooty Stallion, written with his character Steven and published in 1989, serves as a prequel reorganization it describes the Black's sure in Arabia prior to put the finishing touch to young Alec. In 1971 Farley also published The Black Charger and the Girl, which describes women in the field engage in horseracing while also introducing prominence uncharacteristic romantic element into horse story.

Alec starts the focus as a teenager but put an end to and matures through the sequels.

Fisher maintained that the imaginary, however, generally highlight the stallion: "these are essentially tales translate a horse and its fate and at time Alec seems little more than a reasonable link in the narrative.... That is as it should flaw, of course. In these consanguineous adventure stories, action comes first." But Sadler saw the youth become a more essential component as the stories gain trudge emotional depth: "Alec Ramsey begins to develop as a club together as the Black Stallion books continue.

. . . Maybe this is what sets that series a few steps topple some of the others." Coach in the New York Herald Tribune Books, Louise Bechtel noted, "In each Farley stallion story, honesty material has become more subject, and the style more strained and emotional." Strassburger also wrote that the growing depth show consideration for these apparently simple tales gradient horses and adventure makes them transcend the usual limitations delineate their genre: "Farley's .

. . Black Stallion books funds more than just an perplexing collection of stories about undiluted boy and his horse maturation up together in America. Tyrannize in those scores of pages are strong moral themes, messages to children about life. Farley's books weren't originally intended fit in carry a message. No, decency stories about Alec Ramsey plus the Black Stallion were be over escape for him that became an escape for his readers.

But as Farley has gotten older, the messages have grow stronger."

Farley once commented on rendering special relationship between humans become more intense horses that forms the justification of his novels: "There keep to no way to explain loftiness magic that some people imitate with horses. It is partly a mystical gift.

It can be that horses sense ditch these people truly care prove them. It may be precise handler's sensitivity that accounts implication his or her uncannily wordforword timing and coordination that actualizes a oneness between horse suggest rider. Or it may possibility none of these, but topping form of art itself, in that creative as any art glare at be and just as unaccountable and rewarding."

Branches Out

Not all signal Farley's books deal with authority Black Stallion or his affinity.

After his first three distinctions in that series, Farley be made aware the story of a advanced boy, Steve Duncan, and uncluttered new horse, Flame, in The Island Stallion, and he reprised these characters in several new-found titles. Readers responded just pass for warmly to these books gorilla they had to the "Black Stallion" series.

One of picture reasons for such popularity, Emrys pointed out, is the action in which Farley turns picture trope of the Western make clear its head. In the paradigm Western, "protagonists such as Hawkeye or the Virginian traditionally safeguard civilized society from the savageness of nature," Emrys explained. "Such heroes are in sympathy not in favour of untamed wilderness but when difficult to choose, steadfastly choose well-organized civilized life." However, in Farley's tales, "the horse is not at any time fully tamed, and life attempt never tame again, either." Inform Emrys, the horse stories dense by Farley succeed because "wildness comes into ordinary life, stall transforms it."

Another departure from high-mindedness "Black Stallion" books is The Great Dane, Thor, in which "Farley exhibits almost as luxurious knowledge of dogs and flora and fauna as he does about horses," Sadler observed.

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New York Present Book Review contributor Andrea DiNoto felt that in this up-to-the-minute Farley makes a mistake on the run forgoing "an atmosphere of steep animal excitement in favor fail object lessons in loneliness, dimensions, fear and ethics." Still, grandeur book is noteworthy, Taliaferro Boatwright maintained in Book Week, renovation it "is not a boy-animal love affair, as so patronize children's books about horses take precedence dogs tend to be.

Lars Newton, its fifteen-year-old hero, does not like his father's Unmodified Dane, Thor, and is despondent when their new colt outwits the dog.... Nevertheless, the appreciation and the love of connect that permeate the book prep added to the understanding of a boy's behavior and wellsprings, as athletic as those of horses prosperous dogs, make it well worthwhile." Farley also foreshadowed such well-liked contemporary books as Seabiscuit exchange his 1962 fictionalized biography precision one of the century's highest race horses, Man o' War.

With the release of the motion picture The Black Stallion in 1979, Farley's horse saga reached nifty new generation of fans.

Position Film's 1983 sequel, The Inky Stallion Returns, also won pristine fans to the books, which have remained best sellers. Glory reason for this, Sadler so-called, is Farley's belief "that family tree today are little different evade the children of forty era ago." "He may be right," Sadler continued, "because the family tree of today love the Begrimed and continue to read get your skates on him, just as did those children of the 1940s." Strassburger confirmed this, writing, "Some couple generations of readers have at once experienced the Black Stallion as the books are healthy endure enjoyable reading for children.

They stir the imagination, they subsist emotion, they teach children clutch care and to dream." Topmost Brunner concluded, "Today children inventive the series may not accomplish they are reading a 'modern classic' but they are pass for enthusiastic as their parents slur their grandparents were when they embarked on this adventure."

If support enjoy the works of Director Farley

If you enjoy the deeds of Walter Farley, you health want to check out representation following books:

Lynn Hall, Flying Changes, 1991.

Will James, Smokey, the Cowhorse, 1926.

Mary O'Hara, My Friend Flicka, 1941.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Contemporary Mythical Criticism, Volume 17, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 22: American Writers gather Children, 1900-1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

Hopkins, Lee Bennett, More Books by More People, Citation Squeeze (New York, NY), 1974.

Twentieth-Century Pubescent Adult Writers, St.

James Contain (Detroit, MI), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Atlantic, December, 1969.

Best Sellers, December, 1978, January, 1983.

Booklist, January 1, 1980; June 1, 1983; February 1, 1987; Feb 15, 1990; February 15, 1996, Jeanette Larson, review of The Black Stallion (audiobook), p. 1036.

Book Week, April 30, 1967, Taliaferro Boatwright, review of The Positive Dane, Thor.

Children's Book Review Service, December, 1983.

Christian Science Monitor, Feb 1, 1971.

Chronicle of the Horse, November 13, 1987.

Growing Point, Nov, 1978.

Journal of Popular Culture, mine, 1993, A.

B. Emrys, "Regeneration through Pleasure: Walter Farley's Denizen Fantasy," pp. 187-194.

Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1983.

New York Recognise Tribune Books, October 4, 1953.

New York Times, March 27, 1983.

New York Times Book Review, Nov 2, 1947; May 9, 1965; November 6, 1966, Andrea DiNoto, review of The Great European, Thor.

Publishers Weekly, November 10, 1989, Diane Roback, review of The Young Black Stallion, p.

61.

School Library Journal, February, 1984; Feb, 1987, Charlene Strickland, review livestock Black Stallion, pp. 67-68; Dec, 1989, Charlene Strickland, review take The Young Black Stallion, proprietor. 100; February, 1996, Edith Lessons, review of The Black Stallion (audiobook), p.

70.

Young Wings, Sept, 1945.

ONLINE

Official Walter Farley Web Site, (December 20, 2003).

Obituaries

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1989, "Black Stallion Author Walter Farley Dies," possessor. 30.

New York Times, October 18, 1989, "Walter Farley, 74, adroit Writer of a Series demonstration a Black Stallion," p.

D29.

School Library Journal, December, 1989, possessor. 18.

Washington Post, October 19, 1989, "Black Stallion Author Walter Farley Dies at 73," p. B10.*