Unrecorded Hardcover Issue

On the Road [Unrecorded Hardcover Issue]

Kerouac, Jack

Notes: This is an unusual commercially produced hardcover version of Kerouac's great Beat novel. The pages are from the first printing of the Signet paperback (September 1958), but the binding is a two-part blue and gold cloth over boards. The spine and front cover are stamped in gilt. The spine has a publisher's logo at the base consisting of three books, each with a letter on the spine. The title is handwritten (?) on the spine and "Kerouac" is written (or printed?) near the bottom edge of the front cover. Your cataloguer and several other booksellers have been unable to read the initials of the publisher in the logo.

Ann Charters's Kerouac bibliography mentions a hardcover Compass edition from 1959 but Compass used a different logo and the page size is larger. If I were to speculate, I would guess that this edition was prepared for libraries or for the export market. In any case, it is a very scarce variant, clearly commercially produced rather than a handmade one-off, that appears unrecorded in the Kerouac bibliographies.

Edition + Condition: Cover faded as spine; some foxing to the inside covers, thus very good. Bound from the first printing sheets of the Signet paperback edition.

Publication: (N.-pl.): (illegible), [ca. 1958].

Item No: #361600

Price: $500