Ann Charters (; born November 10, 1936) is Professor Emerita of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. She is a

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

and

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-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by members o ...

scholar.

Early life and career

Charters was born on November 10, 1936, in

Bridgeport, Connecticut Bridgeport is the List of municipalities in Connecticut, most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut and the List of cities in New England by population, fifth-most populous city in New England, with a population of 148,654 in 2020. Loc ...

. She is a professor of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs and has been interested in Beat writers since 1956, when as an undergraduate English major at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

(B.A. 1957) she attended the repeat performance of the Six Gallery Poetry reading in San Francisco where

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 Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

gave his second public reading of "

Howl Howl most often refers to: * Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species * "Howl" (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg Howl or The Howl may also refer to: Film * '' The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film * ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 Am ...

." She began collecting books written by Beat writers when she was a graduate student at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

(M.A. 1960;

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

1965). After completing her doctorate, she worked with

to compile his bibliography. After his death she wrote the first Kerouac biography, ''Kerouac: A Biography'' (1973). Charters was denied access to Kerouac's archives and so she relied heavily upon his own fictionalized accounts of his life. She also edited his posthumous collection '' Scattered Poems'' and both volumes of his ''Selected Letters'' as a life-in-letters biography. She has written a literary study of

Charles Olson Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist United States poetry, American poet who was a link between earlier Literary modernism, modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams an ...

and biographies of black entertainer

Bert Williams Bert Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922) was a Bahamian-born American entertainer, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. While some sources have ...

and (with her husband

Samuel Charters Samuel Barclay Charters IV (August 1, 1929 – March 18, 2015) was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz. He also wrote fiction. Early life a ...

, a musicologist) the Russian poet

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

. She was the general editor of the two volume encyclopedia ''The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America''. She is also the editor of numerous volumes on Beat and 1960s

American literature American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also ...

, including ''The Portable Beat Reader'', ''The Portable Sixties Reader'', ''Beat Down To Your Soul'', ''The Portable Jack Kerouac'', and in 2010 ''Brother-Souls:

John Clellon Holmes John Clellon Holmes (March 12, 1926 – March 30, 1988) was an American author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel '' Go''. Considered the first "Beat" novel, ''Go'' depicted events in his life with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal ...

, Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation'', which she co-authored with her husband. Charters published a collection of her photographic portraits of well-known writers in the book ''Beats & Company''. Her photographs of the Nobel-Prize winning Swedish poet

Tomas Tranströmer Tomas Gösta Tranströmer (; 15 April 1931 – 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long winters in Sweden, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer' ...

illustrate Samuel Charters' English translation of Tranströmer's long poem ''Baltics'' (2012). She also photographed Olson in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in her book of their letters, ''Evidence of What Is Said'' (2015).

Selected publications

* Charters, Ann (1967). ''A Bibliography of Works by Jack Kerouac: (Jean Louis Lebris De Kerouac) 1939–1967.'' New York: The Phoenix Bookshop. * ___ (1968). ''Olson/Melville: A Study in Affinity.'' Berkeley: Oyez. * ___, ed. (1970). Charles Olson, ''The Special View of History''. Berkeley: Oyez. * ___ (1973). ''Kerouac: A biography''. San Francisco: Straight Arrow. * ___ (1986). ''Beats and Company: Portrait of a Literary Generation.'' Garden City: Doubleday. * ___ and Allen Ginsberg (1986). ''Scenes Along the Road: Photographs of the Desolation Angels''. * ___, ed. (1992). ''The Portable Beat Reader.'' Viking. * ___, ed. (1996). ''The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader''. New York: Viking. * ___, ed. (1995). ''Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Vol 1, 1940–1956''. Viking. * ___, ed. (1999). ''Jack Kerouac: selected letters, Vol 2, 1957–1969''. New York: Viking * ___, ed. (2001). ''Beat down to your soul: What was the Beat Generation?''. New York: Penguin. * ___, ed. (2003). ''The Portable Sixties Reader.'' New York: Viking. * ___ and Samuel Charters (2010). ''Brother-Souls: John Clellon Holmes, Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation.'' Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. *''T.S. Eliot and Charles Olson: Young Tom and Charlie: Two American Poets at Home in Gloucester'' (2024). Selected with an introduction by Charters. *The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction

References

External links

Brief biographyFinding aid to the Ann Charters papers at Columbia University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charters, Ann 1936 births Living people Writers from Bridgeport, Connecticut American academics of English literature Columbia University alumni University of Connecticut faculty 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers American women non-fiction writers American women academics 21st-century American women