Scope and content:

The correspondence series ranges from the early 1940's through the mid 1990's and contains letters, postcards, birthday cards, telegrams, manuscripts, Christmas cards, and other items sent to Ginsberg.

The correspondence is particularly rich in correspondence between Ginsberg and virtually all of the authors associated with the Beat Generation, including Allen Ansen, Gregory Corso, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, and Philip Whalen among others.

The correspondence series also contains some materials from William S. Burroughs, Sr., Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, including a few sporadic letters, post-cards, and photocopies of letters, but the vast bulk of the correspondence from these authors to Allen Ginsberg was sold by Ginsberg to Columbia University in the 1970's. The majority of the original Burroughs correspondence in this collection post-dates that sale.

Other prominent literary figures represented in the correspondence include: Don Allen, Lucien Carr, Carolyn Cassady, Robert Creeley, Diane DiPrima, Bob Dylan, LeRoi Jones a.k.a. Amiri Baraka, Timothy Leary, Denise Levertov, Norman Mailer, Gerard Malanga, Yoko Ono, George Plimpton, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Stephen Spender, Lionel Trilling, Andrei Voznesenski, John Wieners, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Louis Zukofsky.

A large portion of the correspondence represents business communications between Ginsberg and publishers, editors, translators, literary agents, and others associated with the business end of his writing career, such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the co-founder and publisher of the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, Fernanda Pivano, who was the Italian translator for most of the Beat writers, including Ginsberg.

By far the most extensive files of correspondence from a single source are from his life partner, Peter Orlovsky. This correspondence documents their lives together from the 1950's through the 1980's.

The correspondence series also contains files of communication between Allen Ginsberg and his family members, including his father, Louis Ginsberg, his stepmother, Edith Ginsberg, his brother, Eugene Brooks, sister-in-law, Connie Brooks, and nephews, Lyle Brooks Alan Brooks, and various aunts, uncles and cousins.

The remainder of the correspondence is comprised of letters, postcards, and other items sent to Ginsberg by fans.

Language:

English .

Arrangement:

The bulk of the correspondence is arranged by decade and thereunder alphabetically.

Contents

Access and use