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On the Road

On the Road

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On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

  • Used
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Used - Very Good/Very Good
Seller
Seller rating:
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Southampton, New York, United States
Item Price
$5,499.99
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About This Item

Viking, 1957. First Edition. Hardcover. Used - Very Good/Very Good. Stated First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($3.95 price intact). Published by Viking, 1957. Octavo. Black cloth boards stamped in white with red topstain. Book is very good plus with spine straight and sharp corners. Binding tight and pages crisp. Has a light erasure mark on flyleaf and some very light rubbing to cloth of bottom corners. Dust jacket is very good with some light shelf wear. Has several small closed tears on inside of jacket with small pieces of tape (not visible from front). Has some spine fading to the red of the spine illustration. Laid in are two publisher review materials (Viking Press review slip & publisher/agent business card of Barbar Burn from Viking). A wonderful copy of this landmark of American fiction. 310 pages. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Southampton, New York.

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
Southampton Books US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
89143
Title
On the Road
Author
Jack Kerouac
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Jacket Condition
Very Good
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First Edition
Publisher
Viking
Date Published
1957
Keywords
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Terms of Sale

Southampton Books

30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

About the Seller

Southampton Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2022
Southampton, New York

About Southampton Books

Southampton Books & Sag Harbor Books - Independent bookstores located in the villages of Southampton & Sag Harbor, New York. Selling new and collectible books in all categories. We Buy Books! Do you have books to sell? Call or email or visit our website. Collections - Libraries - Individual Titles.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Octavo
Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
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...
Rubbing
Abrasion or wear to the surface. Usually used in reference to a book's boards or dust-jacket.
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...
Tight
Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
New
A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
Shelf Wear
Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
Cloth
"Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
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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