Jack Kerouac's lost first novel published

Jack Kerouac's first novel — considered lost during his lifetime and based on his early experiences as a U.S. merchant marine — has been published.

Penguin Classics has released The Sea is My Brother: The Lost Novel, based on a handwritten manuscript found in the Beat Generation writer's archives by his brother-in-law.

Best known for his autobiographical road trip novel On The Road, Kerouac had mentioned the 158-page manuscript for The Sea is My Brother in his personal correspondence. However, the discovery of the complete manuscript came as a surprise to literary experts.

He wrote the sea narrative following his first tour in the merchant marine in 1942, when he was just 20 years old.

It wasn't until 1950 that he landed a publisher for his writing (The Town And the City is considered his first major work). The iconic U.S. writer died of an internal hemorrhage in 1969, at the age of 47.

Kerouac once described The Sea is My Brother as a book dealing with a "man's simple revolt from society as it is, with the inequalities, frustration and self-inflicted agonies," according to Penguin.

The publisher called it "a unique insight into the young Kerouac and the formation of his genius."

However, according to biographer Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, the Beat writer dismissed his early, first attempt at a novel.

"He said it is a crock as literature," Nicosia told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.