Books with a Future at the Walden Book Shop in Chicago

This slim catalogue of books from a private collection was published by the Walden Book Shop in Chicago sometime during the Great Depression if I'm reading the references correctly in the introduction to the catalogue, signed A Busted Bibliophile (with apologies to A.E.N). A.E.N. is Alfred Edward Newton (1864-1940), prolific bibliophile from Philadelphia and author of books about books and book collecting. "A Busted Bibliophile" refers to George H. Sargent's "A Busted Bibliophile and His Books: Being a most Delectable History of the Diverting Adventures of that Renowned Book Collector A. Edward Newton of Doylesford in Pennsylvania, Esquire."

The Walden Book Shop was owned by a co-operative started by novelist and short story writer Sherwood Anderson as the Chicago Co-Operative Bookstores Company. The Waldenbooks chain in later decades had no relationship to the Chicago co-op. By 1932, in the throes of the Great Depression, the book shop in the Michigan Square store front filed for bankruptcy and announced an auction for its collection. This catalogue, with its references to the Great Depression and the "busted bibliophile," may have been published in an effort to stall bankruptcy proceedings. It is not an auction catalogue but appears to have preceded the auction in a desperate move to generate income. With the bankruptcy notice in 1932, the publication date of this catalogue is probably the same year or late in the previous year. 

The person who had this copy of the catalogue noted several titles with red check marks in the margins. One caught my eye, not for the title, but for the unchecked title above it. The owner of this catalogue seemed more interested in Anita Loos' "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes," her 1927 sequel to "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." The author preceding Loos in the catalogue was Jack London with "The Abysmal Brute." Both books were First Editions in Fine condition. It's easy to find which copy would have made the better investment over the following decades and, thus, the better book with a future. Nearly a century later, London's book in collectible condition can break the four-figure mark in dollars, while Loos' sequel in like condition may pull you into the low hundreds.

Another interesting component to this little catalogue is its collection of African American literature under the heading "The Negro in Literature," with a four-paragraph introduction about the great potential in this genre for collectors, while making a case for why this material should be collected. Some 77 titles are offered and nearly a century later they serve as a brief bibliography of rarities of the early period (Phillis Wheatley, for example) as well as books responsible for the New Negro Movement, also known as the Harlem Rennaissance, of the 1920s and 1930s "which has been so interesting a development in American letters within the past ten years" as stated by the catalogue's author in the introduction.

The author, who identifies only as A Busted Bibliophile, wrote the introductory paragraphs in first person and refers to the books in this catalogue as being from his personal collection. Could this voice have been the co-op's founder, Sherwood Anderson? 

Regardless of the collection's origin, there is some irony in the catalogue title, "Books with a Future" as the book shop offering them had no future.  Though the book shop failed, its collection of "books with a future" scattered and lived on in the collections of readers and bibliophiles, and it's reasonable to assume that they have continued that journey into a current generation of collectors and curators. In that sense, investment value aside, these books did indeed have a future.