In the mid-1950s a new literary movement emerged from a New York-based group of writers who migrated to the West Coast and became the voice of a Post-War generation - the Beats. Founded by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs the group expanded to include a fresh-faced delinquent just out of prison, Gregory Corso.

Corso was a creature of the streets and his poetry, although reflecting refined sensibilities, often harkened back to his old Italian neighborhood and the petty mischief that landed him in penal institutions. As many of the Beats left for San Francisco, Corso chose a different path and moved to the area around Harvard University, where he acquired knowledge by stealth, pretending to be a Harvard classman.

As writer Ed Ward describes in the afterword to this volume of Corso's poetry, Corso was ratted out by some of the students who apparently resented that he was enjoying the campus life for free. However, once it was discovered how talented the young poet was he was allowed to stay, and other more appreciative students bankrolled The Vestal Lady on Brattle, Corso's first book, published privately and later picked up by City Lights Books, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's renowned imprint for the Beat writers.