Rare Book Collection Exhibit

Visions from the Underground: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights Books, and Alternative Publishing in America

Anarchist poet and Beat publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an alumnus of UNC-Chapel Hill ('41), founded City Lights Books in San Francisco, the nation's first all-paperback bookstore. City Lights Books published many of the Beat generation's most important and most controversial works, including Howl, and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. Ferlinghetti's collection of poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions, 1958), by 1990 had become the best-selling book of poetry worldwide by a living U.S. author. The exhibition features not only the writing of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but also the works published by City Lights Books over the past forty-five years.

The exhibit will run through the end of March 2002. If you have further questions about the exhibition or Rare Book Collection holdings, call 962-1143.