Minicab War

Corso was the guiding spirit behind a spoof or political action (or both) in 1961. Along with two other poets, Anselm Hollo and Tom Raworth, he produced a special edition of the nascent literary journal Outburst that purported to include interviews with T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, and John Betjeman, along with those of a taxi cab driver and a minicab driver. The issue at stake was the introduction of a fleet of "minicabs" onto London streets, which produced an outcry from the traditional cab drivers (as pictured on the edition's cover).

There were only 250 copies of the edition. NYU's rare books library has one, and the Research Bureau has promised to provide excerpts. (Covers courtesy Beatbooks.com.)

For more on the minicab controversy (actually, Ford Anglia 105Es, pictured below), see this excellent Cab4Now post.

(Courtesy Cab4Now.com)