Delphi Complete Works of Jack Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac, Delphi Classics (Editor)

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist, poet and leader of the Beat movement. His iconic masterpiece ‘On the Road’ exacted a broad cultural influence, capturing the spirit of its time as no other work of the 20th century had done since ‘The Great Gatsby’. Kerouac’s insistence upon ‘First thought, best thought’ and his refusal to revise was controversial. He deemed revision as a form of literary lying, imposing a form farther away from the truth of the moment. His novels reveal a quest for pure, unadulterated language—the truth of the heart unobstructed by the lying of revision. His technique demonstrates an unusual writing style, neither haphazard nor sloppy, but systematic in the most-individualised sense. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Kerouac’s complete fictional works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Kerouac’s life and works
* Concise introductions to the major texts
* All 15 novels and novellas, with individual contents tables
* Features rare novels appearing for the first time in digital publishing
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Rare poetry texts
* Easily locate the poems you want to read
* Includes Kerouac’s seminal non-fiction collection, ‘Lonesome Traveler’
* Ordering of texts into chronological order and genres

Please the poetry published after Kerouac’s death cannot appear in this edition, due to copyright restrictions.



The Novels
The Town and the City (1950)
On the Road (1957)
The Dharma Bums (1958)
Doctor Sax (1959)
Maggie Cassidy (1959)
Book of Dreams (1960)
Big Sur (1962)
Visions of Gerard (1963)
Desolation Angels (1965)
Vanity of Duluoz (1968)
Visions of Cody (1972)

The Novellas
The Subterraneans (1958)
Tristessa (1960)
Satori in Paris (1966)
Pic (1971)

The Poetry
Mexico City Blues (1959)
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (1960)
Old Angel Midnight (1973)

The Non-Fiction
Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Genres: Fiction

4739 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2023

About the author

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.