First edition, third impression of the seminal Beat Generation novel. Based on his travels around America in the late 1940s, Kerouac wrote several unsatisfactory versions of the novel before writing the first draft of what eventually became On the Road in three weeks in April 1951, a year after the publication of his first novel, The Town and the City. Kerouac continued to work on the manuscript for several years, deleting some contentious passages and adding more literary sections. Its eventual publication in 1957 caused tremendous debate about the novel’s content, style and the whole generation it was assumed to represent, and thrust instant fame upon Kerouac.