KEROUAC, Jack.

£250,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Archive of unpublished letters from Kerouac to Robert Giroux, with related materials. A recently uncovered archive of unpublished correspondence between Kerouac and his editor-mentor Robert Giroux, spanning 22 May 1949 to 26 April 1955, traces Kerouac's evolution from an anxious debut novelist awaiting publication of The Town and the City to an established author attempting to renew a strained friendship. The letters offer an intimate record of his early ambitions, insecurities, and shifting literary identity. The archive also includes materials from Kerouac's 1951 Guggenheim application and 13 unpublished carbon copies of Giroux's letters to Kerouac (1949-63). Among the most revealing is a 1950 carbon copy of a Kerouac letter, addressed to Ellen Lucy for Giroux's attention, in which he describes his initial plan for On the Road as the story of "a ten year old negro boy" travelling with his older brother - an idea that resurfaced decades later in his final novel, Pic (1971). A letter of August c.1951 contains a short unpublished poem.Kerouac's first four letters, written in 1949, show him in awe of Giroux and preoccupied with the mechanics of bringing The Town and the City to press. He frets over editorial minutiae, urges Giroux to visit Denver, and alludes repeatedly to early drafts of On the Road. Giroux's visit that summer cemented their early camaraderie, and Kerouac soon shifted to addressing him as "Bob". His long letter of 27 July 1949, prompted by Giroux's thoughts on

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