On the Road. First Edition in jacket. With a full signature of "John Kerouac" laid in from a first edition of The Town and the City

Kerouac, Jack. (First Edition)

Published by Viking Press, New York, 1957

A near fine copy handsomely bound in finely woven black cloth stamped in crisp, bright white lettering on the front boards and on the spine. Red top staining. Very clean and tight throughout. In a crisp, colorful first issue dust jacket with the original price of $3.95 at the top of the inside front flap. With blue and red bars of color at the top and bottom of the real panel. Merest touch of rubbing and a few tiny nicks at the top and bottom of the jacket ends; rubbing at the corners. A closed 1/2" tear at the top edge of the spine adjacent to the rear panel. A striking example of this elusive first edition in collector's condition, and with a signature of "John Kerouac" laid in. On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writerJack 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 Counter culture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is aroman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such asWilliam S. Burroughs(Old Bull Lee),Allen Ginsberg(Carlo Marx), andNeal Cassady(Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.The idea forOn the Road, Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published byViking Pressin 1957.The New York Timeshailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."[1]In 1998, theModern LibraryrankedOn the Road55th on its list of the100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen byTimemagazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. (Wikipedia) First Edition with matching dates of 1957 on the title and copyright pages, and with "Published in 1957 by the Viking Press" on the copyright page. No subsequent printings listed. Seller Inventory # 1054

Bibliographic Details

Title: On the Road. First Edition in jacket. With a...
Publisher: Viking Press, New York
Publication Date: 1957
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very good plus.
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
Edition: 1st Edition.