# Ann Charters

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Professor of American Literature

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**Ann Charters** ([née](/source/Birth_name#Maiden_and_married_names) **Ann Ruth Danberg**; born November 10, 1936) is Professor Emerita of American Literature at the [University of Connecticut at Storrs](/source/University_of_Connecticut_at_Storrs).[1] She is a [Jack Kerouac](/source/Jack_Kerouac) and [Beat Generation](/source/Beat_Generation) scholar.[2][3]

## Early life and career

Charters was born on November 10, 1936, in [Bridgeport, Connecticut](/source/Bridgeport%2C_Connecticut). She is a professor of American Literature at the [University of Connecticut at Storrs](/source/University_of_Connecticut_at_Storrs) and has been interested in [Beat writers](/source/Beat_writers) since 1956, when as an undergraduate English major at the [University of California, Berkeley](/source/University_of_California%2C_Berkeley) (B.A. 1957) she attended the repeat performance of the [Six Gallery Poetry reading](/source/Six_Gallery_reading) in San Francisco where [Allen Ginsberg](/source/Allen_Ginsberg) gave his second public reading of "[Howl](/source/Howl_(poem))." She began collecting books written by Beat writers when she was a graduate student at [Columbia University](/source/Columbia_University) (M.A. 1960; [Ph.D.](/source/Ph.D.) 1965).

After completing her doctorate, she worked with [Jack Kerouac](/source/Jack_Kerouac) to compile his bibliography.[3] After his death she wrote the first Kerouac biography,[3][4] *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.[5] She also edited his posthumous collection *[Scattered Poems](/source/Scattered_Poems)* and both volumes of his *Selected Letters* as a life-in-letters biography.

She has written a literary study of [Charles Olson](/source/Charles_Olson) and biographies of black entertainer [Bert Williams](/source/Bert_Williams) and (with her husband [Samuel Charters](/source/Samuel_Charters), a musicologist) the Russian poet [Vladimir Mayakovsky](/source/Vladimir_Mayakovsky). She was the general editor of the two volume encyclopedia *The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America*.[3] She is also the editor of numerous volumes on Beat and 1960s [American literature](/source/American_literature), including *The Portable Beat Reader*, *The Portable Sixties Reader*, *Beat Down To Your Soul*, *The Portable Jack Kerouac*,[3] and in 2010 *Brother-Souls: [John Clellon Holmes](/source/John_Clellon_Holmes), 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](/source/Tomas_Transtr%C3%B6mer) illustrate Samuel Charters' English translation of Tranströmer's long poem [*Baltics*](/source/Baltics_(poem)) (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.[6]

- ___ (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*.[3]

- ___, ed. (1992). *The Portable Beat Reader.* Viking.[3]

- ___, ed. (1996). *The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader*. New York: Viking.

- ___, ed. (1995). *Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, Vol 1, 1940–1956*. Viking.[3][7]

- ___, ed. (1999). *Jack Kerouac: selected letters, Vol 2, 1957–1969*. New York: Viking[2][8]

- ___, 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.[9]

- The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** ["Ann Charters"](https://centerforthehumanities.org/programming/participants/ann-charters). *The Center for the Humanities*.

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-theguardian-mccrum_2-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-theguardian-mccrum_2-1) ["Jottings from the hard shoulder"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/mar/26/classics.biography). *The Guardian*. 26 March 2000. Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-1) [***c***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-2) [***d***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-3) [***e***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-4) [***f***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-5) [***g***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-6) [***h***](#cite_ref-nytimes-douglas_3-7) [Douglas, Ann](/source/Ann_Douglas_(historian)) (9 April 1995). ["On the Road Again"](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/books/on-the-road-again.html). *The New York Times*. [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [0362-4331](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331). Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** [O'Hagan, Sean](/source/Sean_O'Hagan_(journalist)) (5 August 2007). ["Sean O'Hagan on Jack Kerouac's dazzling novel On the Road"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/05/fiction.jackkerouac). *The Guardian*. Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** Maher, Paul (2007). *Kerouac: The Definitive Biography*. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. pp. xiii. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [9781589793668](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/9781589793668).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** O'Conner, Patricia T. (10 May 1987). ["New & Noteworthy"](https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/books/new-noteworthy.html). *The New York Times*. [ISSN](/source/ISSN_(identifier)) [0362-4331](https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331). Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** ["Kerouac joins the mainstream"](https://www.theguardian.com/books/1996/aug/04/biography). *The Guardian*. 4 August 1996. Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** ["The Typist"](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/11/07/reviews/991107.07campbet.html). *The New York Times*. Retrieved 2022-01-03.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** ["New book explores the connection of place and spirit of two celebrated poets"](https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/new-book-explores-the-connection-of-place-and-spirit-of-two-celebrated-poets/article_c37fe826-445f-11ef-a160-5b46474732f0.html). *Gloucester Daily Times*. 2024-07-18. Retrieved 2024-11-12.

## External links

- [Brief biography](https://web.archive.org/web/20060830110300/http://www.lib.uconn.edu/online/research/speclib/ASC/findaids/Charters_A/MSS19980200.html#d0e61)

- [Finding aid to the Ann Charters papers at Columbia University](http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078597/) [Rare Book & Manuscript Library](https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/rbml.html/)

- [Finding aid for the Ann Charters Papers](https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/300) at the [University of Connecticut Archives and Special Collections](/source/University_of_Connecticut_Archives_and_Special_Collections)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Ann Charters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Charters) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Charters?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.