The recent purchase of the Western Investor, an 1890 newspaper from Aberdeen, South Dakota, brought an unusual level of excitement to the newspaper office at the American Antiquarian Society. Despite sporting a slightly whimsical masthead, the paper appeared to be a standard, somewhat dull financial newspaper interesting only for researchers of bank and stock market history. A peek inside, however, revealed that the Western Investor was published by L. Frank Baum, nine years before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
A Google search and a few phone calls later, we learned the Western Investor published at least six issues from August 1890 to January 1891. The AAS copy is one of only two known surviving issues, and the only one held by an institution. As we dug further into Baum’s life, we learned that his first foray into publishing occurred almost twenty years before the publication of his famous novel, as a sixteen-year-old amateur journalist. As luck would have it, AAS holds a previously uncataloged newspaper, the Stamp Collector, which was written, edited, and published by a teenage Baum in Syracuse, New York in 1872. Two L. Frank Baum discoveries in a week! Maybe some of that “Wicked” magic has come to AAS.
