[GINSBERG, Allen, Lawrence FERLINGHETTI, Kenneth PATCHEN, et al.] The Pocket Poets Series. A run of the first 25 volumes.

Printer's ink is the greater explosive - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[GINSBERG, Allen, Lawrence FERLINGHETTI, Kenneth PATCHEN, et al.] The Pocket Poets Series. A run of the first 25 volumes. San Francisco: The City Lights Bookshop. 1955-1968.

Twenty-five volumes; small 8vo. All in original publisher’s typographic card wrappers printed in a variety of colours including yellow, red, blue and green, vols 21 and 22 with cover illustrations/photographs; some including black-and-white photographs, housed in a custom-made solander box; overall light shelfwear and marking, all minimal; vol. 3 with some light marking to covers, spotting to prelims and outer edge, and toning to spine; vols 5 and 6 with small dampstains to covers; vol. 7 with previous owners ink initials to front cover; vol. 16 spine expertly reinforced; vol. 19 with corner crease to upper cover; vol. 22 with previous ownership name in ink to title; some covers a little rubbed to extremities, others a little toned to the wraps; a remarkably fresh set.

First editions, first printings, comprising the first twenty-five titles in the Pocket Poets Series, from Ferlinghetti's Pictures of the Gone World (1955) to Pablo Picasso's Hunk of Skin (1968).

Issued by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, the Pocket Poets Series was one of the most influential publishing ventures of post-war America. Conceived as an inexpensive paperback series that would bring contemporary poetry to a wider audience, it provided an early platform for writers including Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Patchen, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, and William Carlos Williams, while helping to define the literary identity of the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat writers. Its distinctive typographic wrappers, indebted to contemporary political pamphlets and little magazines, became, and remains, one the most recognisable designs in twentieth-century American publishing.

The series began in August 1955 with Ferlinghetti's own Pictures of the Gone World, a volume whose performative energy and conversational style quickly found an audience in the coffeehouses and improvised venues of San Francisco. Over the next thirteen years, the Pocket Poets Series published many of the defining voices of post-war American poetry, combining avant-garde experimentation with unprecedented accessibility, reaching readers beyond traditional literary circles. Among its most celebrated publications was Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956), the fourth title in the series. Ferlinghetti had first heard Howl performed at the now legendary Six Gallery reading of 7 October 1955, an event often regarded as the symbolic beginning of the Beat movement. Returning home, he sent Ginsberg a telegram echoing Emerson's letter to Whitman: 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?'

The publication of Howl brought national attention to both City Lights and the Pocket Poets Series. In 1957 Ferlinghetti and City Lights manager Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested for publishing and selling the book. The ensuing obscenity trial culminated in a ruling that Howl was not obscene, a landmark victory against censorship that significantly expanded legal protections for literary expression in the United States and cemented the reputation of both the series and its publisher.

See Cherkovski, Ferlinghetti: A Biography (1979); Cook, City Lights Books: A Descriptive Bibliography (1992); Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet (2010).

SKU: 2120273