Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press

Winner of the 2007 Welty Prize

In 1960, Jon Edgar and Louise ＂Gypsy Lou＂ Webb founded Loujon Press on Royal Street in New Orleans’s French Quarter. The small publishing house quickly became a giant. Heralded by the Village Voice and the New York Times as one of the best of its day, the Outsider, the press’s literary review, featured, among others, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov, and Walter Lowenfels. Loujon published books by Henry Miller and two early poetry collections by Bukowski.

Bohemian New Orleans traces the development of this courageous imprint and examines its place within the small press revolution of the 1960s.

Drawing on correspondence from many who were published in the Outsider, back issues of the Outsider, contemporary reviews, promotional materials, and interviews, Jeff Weddle shows how the press’s mandarin insistence on production quality and its eclectic editorial taste made its work nonpareil among peers in the underground. Throughout, Bohemian New Orleans reveals the messy, complex, and vagabond spirit of a lost literary age.

Jeff Weddle is assistant professor of library and information studies at the University of Alabama. He is author of several poetry collections and one collection of short fiction, and coauthor of The Librarian’s Guide to Negotiation: Winning Strategies for the Digital Age. His work has appeared in Publishing History and Beat Scene.