Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 13th May 2011
Paperback
Published: 13th August 2007
Hardback
Published: 31st May 2022
Paperback
Published: 15th August 2018
Hardback
Published: 23rd July 2025
Paperback
Published: 5th August 2008
On the Road
By (Author) Jack Kerouac
Introduction by Ann Charters
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
15th August 2018
2nd August 2018
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
813.54
Paperback
288
Width 111mm, Height 180mm, Spine 16mm
169g
The novel that inspired a generation, now in A-format On the Road swings to the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveller and mystic, the living epitome of Beat. Now recognized as a modern classic, its American Dream is nearer that of Walt Whitman than Scott Fitzgerald, and it goes racing towards the sunset with unforgettable exuberance, poignancy and autobiographical passion.
Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. Educated by Jesuit brothers in Lowell, he decided to become a writer at age seventeen and developed his own writing style, which he called 'spontaneous prose'. He used this technique to record the life of the American 'traveler' and the experiences of the Beat Generation, most memorably in On the Road and also in The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums. His other works include Big Sur, Desolation Angels, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Gerard, Tristessa, and a book of poetry called Mexico City Blues. Jack Kerouac died in 1969.