S.E. Hinton was in high school when she wrote The Outsiders in 1967, perhaps the most iconic book about American teenagers. Her gritty, empathetic, and authentic rendering of class rivalry in Oklahoma struck a chord with the country, and the book has been widely taught ever since. Its rise to prominence was not so instantaneous, however, and it was not until the book was designated as being for "young adults" and marketed as a good book to teach in schools, that the book became such a classic. Indeed, The Outsiders has been cited as the "first Young Adult Novel," and a recent article in The New Yorker claims that Hinton "almost single-handedly brought the Y.A. genre into being." How fitting that the most famous young adult novel was written by someone who was herself a young adult at the time.
S.E. Hinton was only 15 when she began writing The Outsiders, and its subject matter was based on her own experience in her school in Oklahoma. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Hinton is quoted as saying, "I grew up in a Greaser neighborhood, and I got put in what would be called today AP classes with Socs—so I could see kind of both sides." Hinton's inspiration to begin writing the book came from her own resentment about a Greaser friend of hers getting beaten up on his way home from school, and it fueled the many drafts that she wrote before getting the novel published. Hinton's desire to write the novel was not just connected to her own experience, but also to her desire to read more authentic literature for people in her age group. Later in the interview, she says, "I really wanted to read a book that dealt realistically with teenage life as I was seeing it." Hinton wrote the book that she wanted to read, and this exercise paid off in many ways.
Indeed, The Outsiders birthed an entire genre of fiction. The Outsiders were initially sold on spinning racks in drugstores, but when publishers began to see that the book was doing well in particular markets because teachers were assigning the book in schools, they capitalized on the trend and began more intentionally marketing "Young Adult" fiction. While Hinton herself concedes that plenty of fiction with young protagonists had been published in the past—A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Huckleberry Finn, to name a few—none of these books had ever been marketed to young adults themselves. Interestingly enough, while Hinton agrees that The Outsiders marked the start of a new market and genre, she also sees little value in holding too strictly to categorization; The New Yorker article states, "Hinton had no time for the idea that adults shouldn’t be reading books written for teen-agers or children. 'If you enjoy reading something, read it.”"
