Jack Kerouac

R. J. Ellis (University of Birmingham)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 12 Mar 1922
Died 21 Oct 1969
Activity 1942-1969

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Genres and Modes

Sketch

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet
Travel writer

Other

Autobiographer
Letter-writer/ Diarist

Resources

Kerouac's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Jack Kerouac was born in 1922 into a family of Roman Catholic French-Canadian immigrants in New England. His father, Leo, was an apprentice printer and moved to Lowell in 1912 to work on the newspaper,

L’Étoile

. He married Gabrielle Lévesque (another Catholic, born in Quebec) in 1915: Francis Gerard was their first son (1916), Caroline (Ti Nin) their only daughter (1918). Jean-Louis Kerouac (also known as Ti Jean, and later as Jack Kerouac) was born on March 12, 1922. Gerard, however, died of rheumatic fever in 1926 and Leo turned increasingly to drink and gambling, which led to family arguments and to Jack playing private, elaborate, self-invented games and growing even closer to his mother (whom he called “Mémère”, a familiar French term for “granny” or “old lady”).

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

5933 words

Citation: Ellis, R. J.. "Jack Kerouac". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2482, accessed 21 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article