When was On the Road written and published?

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Portrait of Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet, looking over his shoulder in a collared shirt, circa 1965. — Jack Kerouac American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, c. 1965.

Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road was written in 1951 and published in 1957.12

While the novel is famously associated with a three-week burst of "spontaneous prose" typed onto a 120-foot scroll, the actual process of its creation was more complex. Although the legendary scroll was composed during that three-week period in 1951, the book was written over a period of years, involving significant rehearsal and revision. Following its initial rejection by publishers, it was eventually printed as a book in 1957, where it became a foundational text of the Beat movement and American counterculture.123