Bill Morgan is a freelance archival consultant, bibliographer, editor, and artist. His interest in the Beats goes back to the early 1970s, when he was attending library school at the University of Pittsburgh. For his master’s degree thesis, he compiled a bibliography of the works of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He continued working in close collaboration with Ferlinghetti as his personal bibliographer, and, after a decade of patient research, he published the very thorough and scholarly Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Comprehensive Bibliography.
In 1980, the San Francisco poet referred him to Allen Ginsberg, whose own personal library and archive were among the best sources of information in New York on the Beats. Early consultations with the poet grew into an enduring relationship that lasted from the early 1980s until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. Morgan has also authored or edited a half-dozen other works relating to the Beats.
Morgan’s collections of works by and about Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg are now part of the Rare Book Collection at The Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
