The Subterreaneans

1st UK edition. Red cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine. Very faint foxing to edges, otherwise fine. Dust jacket worn around the edges with some loss to both ends of spine and tail of lower wrapper. A small part of the upper flap is cut off – it looks like it was price clipped, but the price is actually present on the lower flap (unclipped). White mark on upper panel, where a sticker seems to have been removed. Some browning. Spine slightly sunned. Two pieces if sellotape to reverse of dust jacket. *** Kerouac’s first publication after On the Road, originally published in America in 1958. Our copy is the first UK edition from 1960. A film adaption came out in the same year. The UK first edition has a photograph of Leslie Caron on the cover, who played Mardou (the female lead) in the film version of the book. In the book Mardou is a black women (explicitly), in the film she is white. A raw, confessional story of interracial love is turned into a sugar sweet romance. ‘I am crudely malely sexual and cannot help myself and have lecherous and so on propensities as almost all my male readers no doubt are the same – confession after confession.’ Kerouac’s romantic desperation and bouts of heavy drinking ar on full and sometimes uncomfortable display in this novella.