City lights books

City Lights Books, the first all paperback bookstore in the country, was started in San Francisco in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in partnership with Peter Martin. Situated in North Beach on Columbus Avenue, it quickly became the center for the beat poets and other experimental writers who figured strongly in the city's literary renaissance.

Corporate History

City Lights Books, the first all paperback bookstore in the country, was started in San Francisco in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in partnership with Peter Martin. Situated in North Beach on Columbus Avenue, it quickly became the center for Beat poets and other experimental writers who figured strongly in the city's literary renaissance. On January 1, 1955, Ferlinghetti became sole owner of the shop. Convinced that it was a natural for a publishing company, too, he began to publish paperbacks as well as sell them. First to appear in 1955 was a book of his own poems, Pictures of the Gone World, in the "Pocket Poet Series." In time, the series included works by Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Robert Duncan, Gregory Corso, Frank O'Hara, Malcolm Lowry, Bob Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, and others. City Lights also published a number of prose paperbacks, including Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams, Michael McClure's Meat Science Essays, Alan Watts' Beat Zen, Square Zen, The Yage Letters by William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles' A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard, and Edward Dahlberg's Bottom Dogs .