In his prolific correspondence Jack Kerouac set down the raw material of the life that he would later transmute into his multi-volume Legend of Duluoz . He also refined the seemingly freewheeling and spontaneous prose style that became his trademark. This volume contains many letters written between 1940, when Kerouac was a college freshman and 1956, immediately before his leap to celebrity status. They offer invaluable insights into Kerouac’s family life, friendships, travels, love affairs and literary apprenticeship, and provide accounts of the events that inspired On the Road , Visions of Cody and The Dharma Burns .