Books and Manuscripts

Ginsberg, Allen
Howl and Other Poems
San Francisco: The City Lights Pocket Bookshop, (1956). First edition, first issue (with “Lucien Carr” in dedication and eighth line of second paragraph on rear wrapper reading “Harlem.”) Square 12mo. 44 pp. Presentation copy, inscribed by Ginsberg to his cousin Gene Levy: “Allen Ginsberg / for Gene Levy, Cousin via / my mother's brother Same.” Publisher's stiff black stapled wrappers, white printed wrap around label, dampstaining and wear along spine, small chipping and tears to spine ends, small nick in lower fore-edge of front wrapper, creasing to top corner of rear wrapper, light stain in bottom corner of same. Morgan A3 a1.1

Presentation copy of this landmark collection of poetry that ushered in the Beat Generation, inscribed by Ginsberg to his cousin, Gene Levy. This first printing was published in only 1,000 copies, in November, 1956. Upon the release of the second printing, in March 1957, the books were seized by U.S. Customs and the San Francisco police and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges. Represented by the ACLU, the trial against Howl and Ferlinghetti became a cause celebre for freedom of expression. In October 1957, after numerous witnesses testified in defense of the book's literary merits, Judge Clayton W. Horn found Ferlinghetti not guilty of publishing and selling obscene material on the grounds that Howl was not written with lewd intent, and contained “redeeming social importance." (Morgan, Howl on Trial, p. 3)