Ginsberg, Allen

Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions... with: Ephemera

ISBN: 0060156287
New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986. First Edition. Hardcover. "Since this work is not done posthumously, I've had the liberty to annotate each verse regarding appropriate cultural references which few critics have examined...I've lived with and enjoyed Howl for three decades, it has become a social and poetical landmark, notorious at worst illuminative at best...it seems helpful in this fourth decade of the poem's use to clarify its literary background and historical implications as well as its author's intentions." (from "Author's Preface: Reader's Guide," pg. xi) Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," along with William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch & Jack Kerouac's On the Road, were the blindingly unprecedented works that ignited the Beat Generation phenomenon, which in turn paved the way for the literary & cultural upheavals that culminated during the 1960s & continue to resonate. The full title of this volume is "Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by the Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & bibliography." Ginsberg himself wrote & organized this monumental, Talmudic presentation-dissection-history of the poem which catapulted him to fame as a Founding Father of the Beat Generation. With many vintage images & facsimile reproductions of manuscript pages. Edited by Barry Miles, among the foremost biographers & colleagues of Ginsberg & WSB; a most prolific & outstanding literary & cultural historian-witness in his own right. Hardcover in unclipped first-issue dust jacket (with $22.50 price & "1286" printed at front flap), first edition as stated on copyright page, first printing as indicated by number sequence thereon. Morgan, A51 (a)1.1, pgs. 65-66. We found & have retained, between rear endpaper & paste-down, two items of ephemera: Single copied sheet with article by Michael Blumenthal entitled "Allen Ginsberg, MIllionaire?," with facsimile hand-written date of "10-29-94," unspecified but likely from that day's issue of the New York Times or NYT Book Review, in very fine condition with only mild browning incl. at blank verso; & "Children of the Beats," an article by Daniel Pinchbeck with photographs of Beat progeny by Barron Claiborne, seven pages on four sheets clipped from the New York Times Magazine issue of November 5, 1995, four pages folded once horizontally & also in very fine condition with mild browning, slight irregularity at clipped edges. From the collection of George Bornstein (1941-2021), scholar, author & academician here at the University of Michigan- a true Giant of Letters who was a dearly missed friend & mentor to this writer. An essential Ginsberg collectible in its rarest original form; enriched with relevant ephemera & most distinguished provenance. Book in very fine condition with only a hint of rubbing to edges of text block; otherwise substantially mint inside & out. Dust jacket very fine with only a bit of rubbing, faint scratching to front, back covers & spine; a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same & flaps. An extra handling fee will be added for shipping due to the size and weight of this item. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #5740]

Price: $125.00