File:On_the_Road_(1957)_front_cover,_first_edition.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Author
- Jack Kerouac
- Cover artist
- Bill English
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Beat , stream of consciousness
- Set in
- New York , Chicago , Denver , San Francisco , elsewhere in the U.S. , and Mexico , 1947–1950
- Publisher
- Viking Press
- Publication date
- September 5, 1957
- Publication place
- United States
- Media type
- Print (hardback & paperback)
- Pages
- 320 pages
- Preceded by
- The Town and the City , (1950)
- Followed by
- The Subterraneans , (1958)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- literary work
- Author
- Jack Kerouac
- Country of origin
- United States
- Publisher
- Viking Press
- Followed by
- The Subterraneans
- Follows
- The Town and the City
- Main subject
- counterculture
- Movement
- Beat Generation
- Narrative location
- Denver
- Image
- On the Road (1957) front cover, first edition.jpg
Show 7 more facts
- Commons category
- On the Road (novel)
- publication date
- 2003-04-22
- inception
- 1951-04-00
- language of work or name
- English language
- title
- オン・ザ・ロード
- derivative work
- On the Road
- form of creative work
- novel
via Wikidata · CC0
~32 min read
Encyclopedic overview
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American author Jack Kerouac, inspired by his travels across the United States. It is widely regarded as a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation, following a group of friends living for the moment against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and rebellion.
The novel is a roman à clef, featuring characters based on central figures of the Beat movement. Kerouac appears as the narrator under the name Sal Paradise. The idea for the book developed during the late 1940s through a series of notebooks and was later typed on a continuous reel of paper over a three-week period in April 1951. It was first published by Viking Press in 1957.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “On the Road” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.