The best timeframe I find for The Beat Generation is from 1944 to 1960. Thus this culture overlaps with the Baby Boomers, whose timeframe runs from 1946 to 1964. The beats, like the hippies can be regarded as a Baby Boomer sub-culture, to me they are the cream that rose to the top from the masses of the Baby Boomers. (Well you can tell where my sympathy’s lie without much trouble.) The beats evolved from The Bohemian's as the hippies arose from The Beats.

The term “Beat Generation” was coined by John Clellon Holmes in his November 16, 1952, article This Is The Beat Generation, for the New York Times Magazine.

Several months ago, a national magazine ran a story under the heading 'Youth' and the subhead 'Mother Is Bugged At Me.' It concerned an eighteen-year-old California girl who had been picked up for smoking marijuana and wanted to talk about it. While a reporter took down her ideas in the uptempo language of 'tea,' someone snapped a picture. In view of her contention that she was part of a whole new culture where one out of every five people you meet is a user, it was an arresting photograph. In the pale, attentive face, with its soft eyes and intelligent mouth, there was no hint of corruption. It was a face which could only be deemed criminal through an enormous effort of righteousness. Its only complaint seemed to be: 'Why don't people leave us alone?' It was the face of a beat generation.
Its members have an instinctive individuality, needing no bohemianism or imposed eccentricity to express it. Brought up during the collective bad circumstances of a dreary depression, weaned during the collective uprooting of a global war, they distrust collectivity. But they have never been able to keep the world out of their dreams. The fancies of their childhood inhabited the half-light of Munich, the Nazi-Soviet pact, and the eventual blackout. Their adolescence was spent in a topsy-turvy world of war bonds, swing shifts, and troop movements. They grew to independent mind on beachheads, in gin mills and USO's, in past-midnight arrivals and pre-dawn departures. Their brothers, husbands, fathers or boy friends turned up dead one day at the other end of a telegram. At the four trembling corners of the world, or in the home town invaded by factories or lonely servicemen, they had intimate experience with the nadir and the zenith of human conduct, and little time for much that came between. The peace they inherited was only as secure as the next headline. It was a cold peace. Their own lust for freedon, and the ability to live at a pace that kills (to which the war had adjusted them), led to black markets, bebop, narcotics, sexual promiscuity, hucksterism, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The beatness set in later.

Important writers of the Beat movement where William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg; they shared a passion for experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and Neal Cassady.

Some novels of The Beat Generation were "On the Road", "Howl," and "Naked Lunch".

Some notable women of the beats were, Carolyn Cassady who wrote a memoir about her time with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg called Off the Road. Edie Parker Kerouac who has described her times with Jack Kerouac in her yet unpublished memoirs.

The drugs of choice for The Beat Generation were alcohol, marijuana and heroin, the psychedelic drugs were not available until the end of the 1950’s. The music of The Beat Generation was Jazz.

The Beat culture had it’s own language. In the pre Hippie hip of the beats, “getting straight” meant getting stoned on heroin, post Hippie; straight means not using drugs or not being gay.

Sources: 'This Is The Beat Generation' by John Clellon Holmes
You can find this article online at http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/ThisIsBeatGen.html

The Beat Generation Archives found at http://www.halcyon.com/colinp/beats.htm
The Language of the Hip found at http://www.halcyon.com/colinp/hipterms.htm