Books

First published edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "To Stephen Dunn, from Allen", with a drawing of a haloed skull and crossbones pointing to the printed quote above. Ginsberg has roughly erased his first attempt at writing "Stephen", likely having misspelled his fellow poet's name. Dunn wrote "plain-spoken poems about the small things in life and the bigger things within them" (New York Times obituary). His prolific output was concerned with the minutiae of middle-class America and his accolades included a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, an Academy Award in literature, and Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. A landmark collection, Howl is one of the principal works of the Beat Generation. It was Ginsberg's first commercially available book, preceded only by the mimeographed printing of the title poem, comprised of 25 copies, and Siesta in Xibalba, comprised of 52 copies, both self-published and distributed for free by Ginsberg to his friends. Howl and Other Poems was printed in an estimated run of 1,500 copies. This copy has the requisite points of first printing, with "Lucien Carr" in the dedication and the eighth line of the second paragraph on the rear cover beginning "Harlem." (with a period rather than comma) Duodecimo. Original wire-stitched black wrappers, white hand-pasted wraparound paper label printed in black. Housed in a custom black quarter-leather solander box, spine lettered in white, grey cloth sides. Professional repair to spine ends, label sometime re-adhered, trivial creasing to edges of wrappers, pastedowns lightly soiled, annotations a little roughly erased from title page: a very good copy. Morgan A3.a1.1.

Howl and Other Poems is a collection of poetry by Allen Ginsberg published in 1956. It contains Ginsberg's most famous poem, 'Howl', which is considered to be one of the principal works of the Beat Generation along with other notable poems.