How Well Do You You Know the Beat Generation?

The Beats were a movement of writers and poets who emerged in the 1950s and 60s, largely in the US. Intertwined with jazz and bebop - the unofficial soundtrack to their work - prominent names in the movement include Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. 

Probably the most famous of all the Beats' works, this is essentially a non-fiction account of Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady’s travels around the US, with names changed for legal reasons. One of the original ‘road novels’, it's much imitated but rarely bettered. Do you know what it's called?  

William Burroughs was seen as the father of the movement. His seminal work is hard to describe. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of drug addiction and sci-fi horror across a range of continents and timeframes. Not for the fainthearted. But have you dared to read it?   

One of the great American poems, it was originally read at Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, and considered to be the starting point of the Beat movement. It was the subject of a famous obscenity trial which was eventually overturned. Can you name this controversial work?

Another semi-autobiographical book by Kerouac following a famous author who breaks down over the course of several visits to a friend’s cabin. The owner of the cabin was based on Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. What's it called?

As well as publishing works by other writers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a poet with a unique voice. This collection contains some of his most accomplished work and was written to be soundtracked by jazz. Can you name the collection?

Published as a collection a few years after the heyday of the Beats in 1968, this book contained poems Gary Snyder had written when hanging out with Ginsberg and Kerouac between 1956 and 1964, inspired by Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. Have you felt its vibrations?

Much younger than the other Beats but an integral part of the group, Gregory Corso travelled with other writers from San Francisco to New York and Paris. This is a collection of poems based on his time in a correctional facility, but what is its incendiary title?