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Better Books
''Better Books'' was an independent bookstore. It was founded by Tony Godwin and was located at 94 Charing Cross Road, London. The shop was a significant location in the 1960s counterculture movement in London. History It was founded by British publisher Tony Godwin who took over the premises at 94 Charing Cross Road, London, in 1946.Keshvani, Rozemin , ''Better Books Better Bookz: Art Anarchy Apostasy, Counterculture and the New Avant-garde''; Fountain, Nigel: ''Underground: the London alternative press, 1966-74'', p. 14. Taylor & Francis, 1988, In 1964, Tony Godwin visited San Francisco and the City Lights Bookstore. He met Lawrence Ferlinghetti and suggested a work exchange, whereby Ferlinghetti would send "one of his Beats over in exchange for an English salesman who needed some education". City Lights store manager Dick McBride moved to the United Kingdom for six months to help "bohemianize" Better Books. Better Books had a string of influential managers including Bill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independent Bookstore
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store (although there are some multi-store independents). They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by large corporations, which often have other divisions besides bookselling. Social role Author events at independent bookstores sometimes take the role of literary salons and independents historically supported new authors and independent presses. U.S. decline and renaissance For most of the 20th century, almost all bookstores in the United States were independent. In the 1950s, automobiles and suburban shopping malls became more common. Mall-based bookstore chains began in the 1960s, and underwent a major expansion in numbers in the 1970s and 1980s, especially B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingly Street
Kingly Street is a street in London's Soho district. It runs north to south from Liberty's and Foubert's Place to Beak Street, in parallel to, and between, Regent Street and Carnaby Street. It was known as King Street until 1906. The Bag O'Nails at no 9, was a live music club and meeting place for musicians in the 1960s, where Paul McCartney met his future wife Linda Eastman Linda Anne Eastman (July 7, 1867 – April 5, 1963) was an American librarian. She was selected by the American Library Association (ALA) as one of the 100 most important librarians of the 20th century. Eastman served as the head Librarian of ... in May 1967. The Northern end runs under the three storey archway that is part of the building that houses the Liberty department store. The renowned Liberty Clock forms part of the masonry section of the archway and looks out over the Northern entrance of Kingly Street. References {{coords, 51.5129, -0.1397, display=title Soho, London Streets in So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's '' Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' '' Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's '' On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.Ann Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underground Culture
Underground culture, or simply underground, is a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different from the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by others. The word "underground" is used because there is a history of resistance movements under harsh regimes where the term ''underground'' was employed to refer to the necessary secrecy of the resisters. For example, the Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes by which African slaves in the 19th century United States attempted to escape to freedom. The phrase "underground railroad" was resurrected and applied in the 1960s to the extensive network of draft counseling groups and houses used to help Vietnam-era draft dodgers escape to Canada, and was also applied in the 1970s to the clandestine movement of people and goods by the American Indian Movement in and out of occupied Native American reservation lands. (See Wounded Knee). The filmmaker Rosa von Praun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Poetry Revival
"The British Poetry Revival" is the general name given to a loose poetry movement in Britain that took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The revival was a modernist-inspired reaction to the Movement's more conservative approach to British poetry. The poets included an older generation - Bob Cobbing, Paula Claire, Tom Raworth, Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, Andrew Crozier, Lee Harwood, Allen Fisher, Iain Sinclair—and a younger generation: Paul Buck, Bill Griffiths, John Hall, John James, Gilbert Adair, Lawrence Upton, Peter Finch, Ulli Freer, Ken Edwards, Robert Gavin Hampson, Gavin Selerie, Frances Presley, Elaine Randell, Robert Sheppard, Adrian Clarke, Clive Fencott, Maggie O'Sullivan, Cris Cheek, Tony Lopez and Denise Riley. Beginnings If the Movement poets looked to Thomas Hardy as a poetic model, the poets associated with the British Poetry Revival were more likely to look to modernist models, such as the American poets Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Charles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Books
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel '' The White Tiger'', which received the 40th Man Booker Prize in 2008, and for its long-standing relationship with the late Christopher Hitchens. CEO Toby Mundy was listed by the ''Evening Standard'' as one of London's top 1000 most influential people in 2012. Background Atlantic Books was founded in February 2000 by Toby Mundy. It was originally the UK subsidiary of the American independent publisher Grove/Atlantic Inc. Grove/Atlantic sold a majority stake in the company in 2009. Allen & Unwin became the majority owner in 2014. Corvus In 2010, Atlantic Books launched a new genre fiction imprint, Corvus, introducing the world of crime, fantasy historical and women's fiction, into the company's list. Corvus is home to the Douglas Brodie crime novels by Gordon Fer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edinburgh Festival
__NOTOC__ This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland. The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which runs alongside it. The latter is the largest event of its kind in the world. The term ''Edinburgh Festival'' is commonly used, but there is no single festival; the various festivals are put on by separate, unrelated organisations. However they are widely regarded as part of the same event, particularly the various festivals that take place simultaneously in August each year. The term ''Edinburgh Festival'' is often used to refer more specifically to the Fringe, being the largest of the festivals; or sometimes to the International Festival, being the original "official" arts festival. Within the industry, people refer to all the festivals collectively as the ''Edinburgh Festivals'' (plural). The festivals Listed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Poetry Incarnation
The International Poetry Incarnation was an event at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 11 June 1965. Background In May 1965, Allen Ginsberg arrived at Better Books, an independent bookstore in London's Charing Cross Road, and offered to read anywhere for free.Nuttall, Jeff, ''Bomb Culture'', London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968. Shortly after his arrival, he gave a reading at Better Books, which was described by Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind". Tom McGrath wrote: "This could well turn out to have been a very significant moment in the history of England - or at least in the history of English Poetry."Fountain, Nigel, ''Underground: The London Alternative Press, 1966-74'', p. 16. London: Comedia, 1988. Shortly after Ginsberg's reading at Better Books, plans were hatched for the International Poetry Incarnation. The event The event, organized by the filmmaker Barbara Rubin, attracted an audience of 7,000 people (including Indira Gandhi) to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas McGrath (poet)
Thomas Matthew McGrath, (November 20, 1916 near Sheldon, North Dakota – September 20, 1990, Minneapolis, Minnesota) was a celebrated American poet and screenwriter of documentary films. McGrath grew up on a farm in Ransom County, North Dakota. He earned a B.A. from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. He served in the Aleutian Islands with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, at Oxford. McGrath also pursued postgraduate studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He taught at Colby College in Maine and at Los Angeles State College, from which he was dismissed in connection with his appearance, as an unfriendly witness, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953. Later he taught at North Dakota State University, and Minnesota State University, Moorhead. McGrath was married three times and had one son, Tomasito, to whom much of the poet's later work was dedicated. McGrath wrote mainly about his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peace News
''Peace News'' (''PN'') is a pacifist magazine first published on 6 June 1936 to serve the peace movement in the United Kingdom. From later in 1936 to April 1961 it was the official paper of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), and from 1990 to 2004 was co-published with War Resisters' International. History Founding and early days ''Peace News'' was begun by Humphrey Moore who was a Quaker and in 1933 had become editor of the National Peace Council's publications. Working with a peace group in Wood Green, London, Moore and his wife, Kathleen (playing the role of business manager), launched ''Peace News'' with a free trial issue in June 1936. With distribution through Moore’s contacts with the National Peace Council, the new magazine rapidly attracted attention. Within six weeks, Dick Sheppard, founder of the Peace Pledge Union, proposed to Moore that ''Peace News'' should become the PPU’s paper.Harry Mister"Humphrey Moore 1909-1995", ''Peace News'' No. 2395.Harry Mister and Step ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized "Howl" in 1956, and it attracted widespread publicity in 1957 when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeff Nuttall
Jeffrey Addison Nuttall (8 July 1933 – 4 January 2004) was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of literary critic A. D. Nuttall. Life and work Nuttall was born in Clitheroe, Lancashire, and grew up in Orcop, a village in Herefordshire. He studied painting in the years after the Second World War and began publishing poetry in the early 1960s. Together with Bob Cobbing, he founded the influential Writers Forum press and writers' workshop. His ''Selected Poems'' was published by Salt Publishing in 2003. Written by James Charnley, ''Anything But Dull: The Life & Art of Jeff Nuttall'' was published in September of 2022 bAcademica Press This is the first full-length biography of Nuttall and is based in several years research and over 80 interviews with Nuttall's family, friends, teaching colleagues and former collaborators. Charnley was o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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