The San Francisco Oracle (Complete Run) Cohen, Allen [Editor]; Michael Bowen [Editor]; Allen Ginsberg; Ken Kesey; Timothy Leary; Alan Watts; Rick Griffin [Art]; Lenore Kandel; John Sinclair; Bob Kaufman; Philip Lamantia; Michael McClure; Michael Hollingshead Americana,Beats,Counterculture,Journalism,Magazines & Periodicals

Complete first edition set of all 12 issues of the San Francisco Oracle, plus the second and third editions of the 7th issue and additional variant of the 10th issue. Bookended by the Oracle's single-issue predecessor P. O. Frisco and single-issue successor Harbinger (virtually the 13th issue of the Oracle) for a total of 17 broadsides, each 12 - 52 pp. Near Fine with typical toning and minimal soiling and edgewear, subscription creases to several issues, and light foxing to covers of Harbinger and fourth issue of Oracle. A spectacular run of the voice of Haight-Ashbury. P. O. Frisco, which lived and died in a single issue published September 2,1966, began with articles including "Concentration Camps Ready for 'Subversives,'" "The Craft of Masturbation," and "Lenny Bruce: what can you say?." Features on culture and politics were supplemented by an art page and a recipe for hashish brownies. After the individualists on staff won a power struggle with the collectivists, the paper was reborn as the San Francisco Oracle just three weeks later. The style was more distinctly psychedelic, with a focus on personal liberty, and the back cover was printed with the editors' "Prophecy of a Declaration of Independence": "We hold these experiences to be self evident, that all is equal, that the creation endows us with certain inalienable rights, that among them are: the freedom of body, the pursuit of joy, and the expansion of consciousness." Over the next two years, the paper's contributors included the countercultural icons Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, and Buckminster Fuller. The issues had themes like "Aguarian Age" and "Youth Quake" and combined articles and poetry with hand-drawn advertisements for health food stores, music sellers, and hippie fashion boutiques. The publishers introduced split-fountain color printing with the sixth issue to create a rainbow roller effect, and the newspaper's graphics and layout came to define the look of hippie culture. The worker-owned paper folded in 1968, and staff members who had relocated to Middletown put out a singe issue called Harbinger which was effectively the thirteenth and final issue of the Oracle. At its peak, the paper was printed in a run of 125,000 copies, and made an outsized impact on American culture as the rest of the country looked toward Haight-Ashbury. The editor Allen Cohen later wrote: "It began as a dream and ended as a legend."