The carbon copy was found among the art protector Annie Ruff's papers and the beats specialist Brian Cassidy dated the draft to 1956. Cassidy says that “Since it is a carbon copy, you can see many of the original choices Ginsberg made before he changed them.
"These are changes that would otherwise have disappeared," he told The Guardian.
Ginsberg (1926–97) made a famous reading of the poem in 1955, but it was not published until the following year in the collection Howl and other stories, published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's publisher City Lights Books.
The poem contained references to, among other things, drug use and homosexuality and led to Ferlinghetti being prosecuted for immorality. He was later acquitted, but the indictment threw Ginsberg into fame.