Personality of Beat Generation

Carolyn Cassady
1923-2013

Carolyn Cassady, a writer who was married to Jack Kerouac's travel companion and a lover of the famous Beat author, has died. She was 90 years old.

Longtime friend Estelle Cimino, co-owner of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, said on Saturday that Cassady died on Friday in a hospital near her home in Bracknell, southeast England. The cause of death was not immediately clear.

Cassady was married to Neal Cassady - a central character in the Beat generation and the basis of the character Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's - for about 20 years. The couple had three children.

She was also a close friend of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and chronicled her experiences with the three in the memoir , published in 1990.

Cassady was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1923 and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. She first met a then-married Neal Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg while she was at the University of Denver getting a master's degree in fine arts and theatre arts.