Books

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1950. 8vo. Orange card wraps with title printed cover in black; pp. [10], 3-499, [5]; housed in custom made cloth covered chemise within slip case with morocco lettering piece on spine; spine has been restored using remnants of the original material; some water stains to half title, corner crease to upper cover, otherwise very good. Advance review copy for Harcourt, Brace and Company. Kerouac's debut and his first major work preceding On the Road (1957), one of the founding works of the "Lost Generation", The Town and the City is an autobiographical coming of age story drawing on the author's childhood in New England as well as the early Beat Movement in New York. Heavily influenced by the confessional work of Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac would describe this prelude to his work body as, "the sum of myself, as far as the written word can go". Always revolutionary in his style, characterised as 'Spontaneous Prose', The Town and the City blends fact and fiction in a beautiful lament to a past America and conjures up close friends prominent in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 70s such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in its cast of characters.

The Town and the City was Jack Kerouac's debut novel, published in 1950. It presents a coming-of-age story of a young man who experiences the dichotomy between provincial American life and the attraction of the city. Kerouac's alter ego is Peter Martin. The novel is heavily influenced by the works of Thomas Wolfe and is based on Kerouac's own early life.