Time signatures: The Beats in the Edwin Morgan Collection
The Mitchell Library’s Edwin Morgan Collection contains Edwin Morgan’s personal library, and tells the story of the poet’s diverse reading life. In among the science, history, travel and art texts are also novels and poetry texts including a sizeable selection of items by and about Beat Generation writers. Many are first editions and a few of these, shown here, are signed.
Visions of Cody by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac saw Visons of Cody as the spiritual sequel to On the Road. In its entirety, published posthumously in 1972, Visons of Cody is a sprawling 400+ pages. This first edition of extracts, printed by New Directions, New York, in 1959, is a mere 128 pages, with a numbered run of 750 copies, all signed by the author.
The Ticket that exploded by William Burroughs
In 1962, Edwin Morgan and William Burroughs both attended the International Writers Conference in Edinburgh, and Morgan dedicated a report of the event in Gambit: Edinburgh University Review to Burroughs. This first edition of The Ticket that Exploded, published by the Olympia Press, Paris, is from the same year, and is signed by Burroughs on the title page.
Cosmopolitan Greetings
Many items in the collection contain inserts inside the front cover. Cosmopolitan Greetings by Allen Ginsburg includes a single folded sheet containing the text of Ginsberg's acceptance speech delivered by Peter Orlovsky for the 1974 National Book Award in Poetry. Produced by the Gotham Book Mart and Gallery, it is in a signed edition of 126, numbered 1 to 100 and lettered A to Z. The copy here is number 55.
