Rob Donnelly, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVign, Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, CA, 1956
Larry Rivers, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, David Amram, and Allen Ginsberg at a diner, 1959
Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Barbara Rubin, Bob Dylan, and Daniel Kramer backstage at McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 1964
This research guide will connect you to primary works, reference works, print books and e-books, databases for articles, and other information sources for the Beat Generation.
The Beat Generation is a literary movement that originated in the 1950s in Columbia University, New York, and blossomed in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, as well. The term "beat" itself holds multiple meanings, including "tired" or "beat down", "upbeat", and "beatific". Their vocabulary are also influenced by jazz music, and their rejection of the conventional culture would largely influence the counterculture of the 1960s, including the hippies.
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The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature by 
Jack Kerouac from The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists
Allen Ginsberg from The Cambridge Companion to American Poets
Beat and Beat Generation from The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature
Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring, 1958 by 
A Different Beat by 
Reconstructing the Beats by
This collection of scholarly essays reassesses the Beat Generation writers in mid-century American history and literature, as well as their broad cultural impact since the 60s from contemporary critical, theoretical, historical, and interdisciplinary perspectives. The traditional canon of major writers in this generation is expanded to include women and African Americans. The essays offer critiques of media stereotypes and popular cliches that influence both academic and popular discourse about the Beats, connect the literature of the Beat movement to music, painting, and film, and ultimately open new directions for study of the Beats in the 21st century.
Technomodern Poetics by
After the second World War, the term "technology" came to signify both the anxieties of possible annihilation in a rapidly changing world and the exhilaration of accelerating cultural change. Technomodern Poetics examines how some of the most well-known writers of the era described the tensions between technical, literary, and media cultures at the dawn of the Digital Age. Poets and writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, and Frank O'Hara, among others, anthologized in Donald Allen's iconic The New American Poetry, 1945-1960, provided a canon of work that has proven increasingly relevant to our technological present. Elaborating on the theories of contemporaneous technologists such as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, J. C. R. Licklider, and a host of noteworthy others, these artists express the anxieties and avant-garde impulses they wrestled with as they came to terms with a complex array of issues raised by the dawning of the nuclear age, computer-based automation, and the expansive reach of electronic media. As author Todd Tietchen reveals, even as these writers were generating novel forms and concerns, they often continued to question whether such technological changes were inherently progressive or destructive. With an undeniable timeliness, Tietchen's book is sure to appeal to courses in modern English literature and American studies, as well as among fans of Beat writers and early Cold War culture.
Women Writers of the Beat Era by
The Beat Generation was a group of writers who rejected cultural standards, experimented with drugs, and celebrated sexual liberation. Starting in the 1950s with works such as Jack Kerouac?s On the Road, Allen Ginsberg?s Howl, and William S. Burroughs?s Naked Lunch, the Beat Generation defined an experimental zeitgeist that endures to today. Yet left out of this picture are the Beat women, who produced a large body of writing from the 1950s through the 1970s and beyond. In Women Writers of the Beat Era, Mary Paniccia Carden gives voice to these female writers and demonstrates how their work redefines our understanding of "Beat." The first single-authored study on female writers of this generation, the book offers vital analysis of autobiographical works by Diane di Prima, ruth weiss, Hettie Jones, Joanne Kyger, and others, introducing the reader to new voices that interact with and reconfigure the better-known narratives of the male Beat writers. In doing so, Carden demonstrates the significant role women played in this influential and dynamic literary movement.
Click on any link below to run a search in the online catalog, for all books and other materials on that subject in, or accessible through, the Gumberg Library.
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This research guide was created by Agaretha Kosasih, English Department Intern, October 2024
If at any time you need help with using Gumberg Library resources, please contact Ted Bergfelt, Humanities Librarian, via email or by phone at 412-396-5351, 8:30 am-4:30 pm ET, Monday-Friday. If he is not available, Ask Gumberg
