Amy Catherine Walton

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Amy Catherine Walton, better known as Mrs O F Walton, was a British author of Christian children's and teenage books, mainly but not exclusively fiction. She was born Amy Catherine Deck in 1849, and died in Leigh, Kent in 1939.

Amy was the daughter of the vicar of St Stephen's Church, Spring Street, Hull.

Her career as an author of children's books began in 1870 with My Mates and I, followed by at least two others. Then in 1874 came one of her best known books, Christie's Old Organ, which has been regularly reprinted up to the present day. It is the story of orphaned Christie and his friend the aged organ-grinder Treffy.

In 1875 she married Octavius Frank Walton, who was her father's curate at the time. It was under her husband's name, as Mrs O F Walton, or simply Mrs Walton, that she was to be better known. In the year of their marriage they moved to Jerusalem where Octavius took up a ministry in a church on Mount Zion until 1879. While there, in 1877, her book A Peep Behind the Scenes was published. It is the story of Rosalie, a child who works in a travelling theatre.

The Waltons lived at Cally, Kirkcudbrightshire for a while, and from 1883 to 1893, Octavius was in the ministry at the church of St Thomas, York, moving to St Jude's, Wolverhampton in 1893. He retired in 1918.

Although she wrote many more books, it is A Peep Behind the Scenes (ISBN 1-4218-0475-1 or ISBN 1-85792-524-6 or ISBN 1-58474-003-5) and Christie's Old Organ (ISBN 1-85792-523-8 or ISBN 1-58474-007-8) which have remained well known, continuing to be published by the Lutterworth Press, successor to her original publisher, the Religious Tract Society, until at least the late 20th century, and later available from other publishers, along with occasional reprints of a few of her other works, such as Saved at Sea (1879) (ISBN 1-85792-795-8 or ISBN 1-58474-131-7), to the present day.