Lawrence Ferlinghetti Pictures of the Gone World City Lights Early Printing

Description

Pictures of the Gone World was Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s first book and the volume that launched City Lights’ legendary Pocket Poets Series in 1955. Ferlinghetti conceived the inexpensive little books as a way to put adventurous modern poetry directly into readers’ hands, and the series quickly became inseparable from the literary culture of San Francisco and the Beat Generation. Number Four would be Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, but it all began here with Ferlinghetti and Number One.

This fifth printing retains the wonderful early physical form of the series: compact format, black wrappers, wraparound yellow paper label and a 75-cent cover price. The first six Pocket Poets titles were produced with this distinctive pasted wraparound-label construction before the series shifted to printed covers beginning with Number Seven. An appealing early copy of the book that started one of the most recognizable poetry series in American publishing.

A great little piece of City Lights history—Pocket Poets Number One in an early fifth printing, still looking very much like the book Ferlinghetti originally put onto the streets of San Francisco.