On the Road.
by KEROUAC, Jack
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Tiny bookseller's ticket to bottom of front free endpaper; very good or better in an attractive jacket which has had some re
- Seller
-
Rochester, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York:: The Viking Press,, 1957.. First edition.. publisher's cloth in dust jacket.. Tiny bookseller's ticket to bottom of front free endpaper; very good or better in an attractive jacket which has had some restoration to the extremities of the spine and some other tears and small chips. The red on the spine is slightly faded as usual. . 8vo,.
Synopsis
Perhaps the most famous and influential of the Beat novels, Jack Kerouac's On the Road represents much of what made the Beat and Counterculture movements so unique and important. The plot concerning the road trips and adventures experienced by Kerouac and his friends is well-known, as are the rumors and tall tales of the books' production. Kerouac often claimed that the wrote On the Road in a mere three weeks on a single 120-foot scroll of paper. Although that scroll does indeed exist and is featured in museums, Kerouac kept detailed journals of his travels that would later become passages and chapters in the finished product. The book was first published by Viking in 1957. Viking Press would go on to publish an edited version of On the Road in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first printing. They substituted the fictional names for the real Beat protagonists, and they even included some of the more sexually explicit passages that were edited out of the 1957 edition. Due to the cultural significance of the book, true first editions/first printings of On the Road are quite valuable. But be warned: it is easy to mistake reprints or book club editions for the real thing, so always check with an expert before making a significant purchase.
Read More: Identifying first editions of On the Road.
Reviews
On Sep 3 2011, West of Eden Books said:
A few years ago, 50 years after its initial publication, and 35 years since I had read it for the first time myself, I loaned my battered paperback copy of On The Road to a young friend of mine who had asked me "What should I read next?". Her reaction was, as I would have hoped, overwhelmingly positive. "It made me want to go hitchhiking" she told me. She didn't go, of course, that's considered too dangerous these days, but she caught the spirit of Kerouac from those yellowed old pages and that made me happy. It made me remember myself from the days before I was twenty. When the world was wide-open in front of me with all my limitless imagination and inexhaustible energy to carry me forward. Those two-and-a-half-hundred pages created in a Benzedrine-fueled typing frenzy spoke to both of us across generations as great writing is meant to do. Jack's tales of Casady, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the rest would continue in his books that followed but the spirit and zest of On The Road stand alone. Bob Dylan said of On The Road, "It changed my life like it changed everyone else's". Myself and my young friend were lucky enough to experience it that same way.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books
(US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 66885
- Title
- On the Road.
- Author
- KEROUAC, Jack
- Format/Binding
- Publisher's cloth in dust jacket.
- Book Condition
- Used - Tiny bookseller's ticket to bottom of front free endpaper; very good or better in an attractive jacket which has had some re
- Edition
- First edition.
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- The Viking Press,
- Place of Publication
- New York:
- Date Published
- 1957.
- Pages
- 310 pp.
- Size
- 8vo,
Terms of Sale
Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books
All books are returnable within ten days if returned in the same condition as sent. New York residents please add 8% sales tax. All items guaranteed. Members ABAA, ILAB.
About the Seller
Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books
Biblio member since 2005
Rochester, New York
About Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books
Specializing in modern first editions since 1978. Fine and rare books in all fields.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
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