Walt Henley Series-Rare Juvenile Series

Here is another installment on the rarest juvenile series. The series discussed today is the three book Walt Henley Series written by Alfred Loomis and published by Ives Washburn. As is almost always the case, the rare series books have publishers who did not specialize in juvenile series books.

Ives Washburn began publishing in 1926. Previously he had worked at the Century and Doran publishing Houses. Washburn was a small publishing house throughout its history. The Walt Henley Series was the only juvenile series of note until the Black Tiger Series and the Ted Wilford Series, both mainly published in the 1960's. Precipitated by the death of the long time (1947-1967) president of the company Sumner Putnam in 1967, a sale to David McKay of the stock of Ives Washburn, Inc. was made in 1968. Putnam was only the second president of the company as he succeeded Ives Washburn who died in 1947. Even after the purchase however , the Washburn imprint was continued.

The Walt Henley Series was a three book series published between 1927 and 1929.

1. Walt Henley DSM 1927
2. Walt Henley, Overseas 1928
3. Walt Henley, Skipper 1929

The blue cloth books are blindstamped with the title and author in gold gilt lettering on the front cover.

The Author, Alfred Loomis, had acted as a quartermaster on a submarine chaser in WW1. Prior to book #1 he had just completed a 2000 mile cruise around the Baltic Sea. His Naval exploits gave his books a credibility.

These books had very limited print runs by Ives Washburn and thus are quite rare. The dust jackets are extremely difficult to find. Clearly one of the toughest juvenile series to obtain.