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On the Road
by Kerouac, Jack
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near fine
- Seller
-
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: The Viking Press, 1957. Hardcover. Near fine. First edition. [4], 310 pp. Octavo. Hardcover, bound in black publisher's cloth, white lettering on the front cover and spine. Spine with minor wear at the head and tail professionally repaired. Binding is tight and the boards are crisp. All edges trimmed, top edge dyed red. A square, tight text block. Ex-libris bookplate o the front pastedown, otherwise no writing or marks in the book. In an original dust jacket in rich colour, no fading, unclipped. A few occasional minor creasing, in an archival plastic sleeve. Laid in loosely a postcard advertisement for an "On the Road" poster. A clean near fine copy in a very good dust jacket. Jack Kerouac was a poet and writer who pioneered the Beat movement. On the Road, his most famous title, is recognized for its literary merit, and it had a significant cultural impact after its publication in 1957. Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty, the image breaking hipsters who populated the novel, wander America, seeking to understand it, and themselves. Compassion for the human experience and love for America merge; and if were possible, the narrative sounds as if it were written in jazz. 1957
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
- Aquila Books
(CA)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 143847
- Title
- On the Road
- Author
- Kerouac, Jack
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Publisher
- The Viking Press
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 1957
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- American Author|Beat Generation|First Edition|Kerouac|Literature
Terms of Sale
Aquila Books
30 day return guarantee, with refund if an item arrives misdescribed.
About the Seller
Aquila Books
Biblio member since 2010
Calgary, Alberta
About Aquila Books
Aquila Books specializes in books dealing with Polar Exploration, Western Canadiana, Mountaineering, the Canadian Pacific Railway, Early Voyages as well as many other areas. We also deal in antique maps and prints, historic photos, autograph letters, postcards, antique scientific instruments and antique bookcases. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- 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...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Tail
- The heel of the spine.
- Publisher's cloth
- A hardcover book comprised of cloth over hard pasteboard boards. ...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Crisp
- A term often used to indicate a book's new-like condition. Indicates that the hinges are not loosened. A book described as crisp...
- Bookplate
- Highly sought after by some collectors, a book plate is an inscribed or decorative device that identifies the owner, or former...
- Text Block
- Most simply the inside pages of a book. More precisely, the block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book....
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- 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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