[ed. WEBB, Jon Edgar.] The Outsider. New Orleans: Loujon Press. 1961, 1962, 1963, 1968-69.
Octavo. Four vols. 3 vols soft back, volume 4/5 with original publisher's paper covered boards with dust wrapper; pp, [iv], 5-9-, [14]; [vi], 7-108, [4]; 138; [ix], 2-191, [7]; scuffing to extremities and minimal creases to corners on soft back volumes, cockling to spine of combined volume, remarkably fine dust jacket on combined volume, overall very good.
Volume 4/5 retrieved from the library of the celebrated miniature book publisher from Texas, Stanley Marcus, whose ex libris stamp is marked to front pastedown.
A seminal 1960's counterculture literary magazine, The Outsider was founded by Jon Edgar Webb and his wife Gypsy Lou Webb, who features on the front cover of many issues (in the third issue Charles Bukowski is the primary subject but still she looms as a portrait in the background). Each copy of the first volume was printed individually in their New Orleans apartment on an antiquated hand-press and was renowned for its distinctive design and eclectic type font as well as the reputation it gained from its range of outlet.
The combined Volume 4 and 5 is significant for collectors because it showcases many of Charles Bukowski's early works, for which the periodical were early promotors. This particular combined issue is described as being edited and printed, "handset mostly", at Loujon's Desert Workshop Printery in Arizona. The issue contains pressed flowers "picked inside a mile of Geronimo's grave" alongside a loosely inserted good luck charm, "Something wild will happen in your life that never happened before… if you let it happen". This specific volume gives much appreciation of the poet Kenneth Patchen, to whom the volume is dedicated and to whom there is a 46 page homage.
The magazine championed the male and female voices of the Beat Generation of the early 60's, incuding profiles such as Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, to name but a few.
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