1957 First Edition First Printing in a Beautiful Binding - ON THE ROAD by Jack KEROUAC.
Author: Jack Kerouac.
Title: ON THE ROAD.
Publisher: New York: The Viking Press, 1957. First Edition, (first printing with 1957 on title page and 'Published in 1957...' with no other printings noted on the copyright page).
Language: Text in English.
Size: 8.5 " X 5 ".
Pages: 310 pages
Binding: Attractive and fine full black calf leather binding with inlays of blue and red leather to the rear panel to match the original dust jacket theme, gilt-stamped compartments, and nice gilt border to front board, two red morocco spine labels, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers (hinges fine) under a protective removable mylar cover. In a fine custom full cloth book slipcase (as shown). A rare find in such a beautiful binding!
Content: Very good content (bright, tight, and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown, some scotch tape remaining marks on half-title page - as shown).
Estimate: (USD 3500 - USD 5000)
The book: Rare in such an attractive binding! On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.
It was published by Viking Press in 1957.
The author: Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts, Kerouac “learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens.” During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published over 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City, and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, who published 12 more novels during his life and numerous poetry volumes.