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Details
KEROUAC, Jack. On the Road. New York: The Viking Press, 1957.
8o. Original black cloth (lightly rubbed); pictorial dust jacket (very lightly worn at edges). Provenance: Joyce Glassman Johnson (presentation inscription; note on front pastedown).
FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY KEROUAC TO HIS LOVER JOYCE JOHNSON on the front free endpaper: "To Joyce with love from amigo beholden Jack." Beneath his inscription he has drawn a silly face. ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY JOYCE JOHNSON on the front pastedown: "3/23/94. Jack Kerouac gave this to me in September 1957, when he came to New York for the publication of On the Road. Joyce Johnson." On the Road was issued 5 September 1957. Charters A2a.
AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION COPY OF ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT POST-WAR AMERICAN NOVEL. Johnson describes the night the first review of On the Road appeared: "After he'd read the whole thing, he said, 'It's good, isn't it?' 'Yes,' I said, 'It's very, very good.'... It was all very thrilling--but frightening too. I'd read lots of reviews in my two years of publishing: none of them made pronouncements like this about history... We returned to the apartment to go back to sleep. Jack lay down obscure for the last time of his life. The ringing phone woke him up the next morning and he was famous" (Minor Characters, p.185).
SCARCE INSCRIBED: In the last thiry years, only four other inscribed copies of On the Road have appeared at auction.
[With:]
KEROUAC, Jack. Autograph letter signed ("Jack"), to Joyce Glassman [Johnson], 20 April [1957], London. 1 page, in pencil, folded air mail letter.
An exuberant letter from Kerouac: "Dear Joyce Arriving N.Y. Friday 26 or Sat 27th & will call you pronto-- Are you and Ti Gris still open-doored for another tender week? Lots to tell you about Paris! Great city! But am determined to establish my new home now-- Don't tell Lucien [Carr] or Helen Eliot I'm returning, I've given up getting drunk at last--(besides I'm embarrass't after all those farewell parties, with everyone except you) Love, Jack See you mighty soon XXX."
[With:]
JOHNSON, Joyce. Minor Characters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983.
8o. Original cloth-backed boards; pictorial dust jacket.
FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY JOYCE JOHNSON on the front free endpaper: "3/23/94. I began this memoir in 1981, twenty-four years after my first meeting with Jack Kerouac, shortly before On the Road was published. I wanted to write not only about my relationship with him but about what it meant to grow up in the 1950's and to be a rebellious young woman attracted to Bohemianism. Minor Characters won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983. Joyce Johnson." (3)
8
FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY KEROUAC TO HIS LOVER JOYCE JOHNSON on the front free endpaper: "To Joyce with love from amigo beholden Jack." Beneath his inscription he has drawn a silly face. ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY JOYCE JOHNSON on the front pastedown: "3/23/94. Jack Kerouac gave this to me in September 1957, when he came to New York for the publication of On the Road. Joyce Johnson." On the Road was issued 5 September 1957. Charters A2a.
AN EXCEPTIONAL ASSOCIATION COPY OF ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT POST-WAR AMERICAN NOVEL. Johnson describes the night the first review of On the Road appeared: "After he'd read the whole thing, he said, 'It's good, isn't it?' 'Yes,' I said, 'It's very, very good.'... It was all very thrilling--but frightening too. I'd read lots of reviews in my two years of publishing: none of them made pronouncements like this about history... We returned to the apartment to go back to sleep. Jack lay down obscure for the last time of his life. The ringing phone woke him up the next morning and he was famous" (Minor Characters, p.185).
SCARCE INSCRIBED: In the last thiry years, only four other inscribed copies of On the Road have appeared at auction.
[With:]
KEROUAC, Jack. Autograph letter signed ("Jack"), to Joyce Glassman [Johnson], 20 April [1957], London. 1 page, in pencil, folded air mail letter.
An exuberant letter from Kerouac: "Dear Joyce Arriving N.Y. Friday 26 or Sat 27th & will call you pronto-- Are you and Ti Gris still open-doored for another tender week? Lots to tell you about Paris! Great city! But am determined to establish my new home now-- Don't tell Lucien [Carr] or Helen Eliot I'm returning, I've given up getting drunk at last--(besides I'm embarrass't after all those farewell parties, with everyone except you) Love, Jack See you mighty soon XXX."
[With:]
JOHNSON, Joyce. Minor Characters. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983.
8
FIRST EDITION, INSCRIBED BY JOYCE JOHNSON on the front free endpaper: "3/23/94. I began this memoir in 1981, twenty-four years after my first meeting with Jack Kerouac, shortly before On the Road was published. I wanted to write not only about my relationship with him but about what it meant to grow up in the 1950's and to be a rebellious young woman attracted to Bohemianism. Minor Characters won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983. Joyce Johnson." (3)