The Outsiders

1967 (published) ; S. E. Hinton

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967 by Viking Press. Hinton was fifteen when she started writing the novel, but did most of the work when she was sixteen and a junior in high school; Hinton was eighteen when the book was published. The book follows two rival groups, the Greasers and the Socs (pronounced by the author as “s-oh-shiz,” short for Socials), who are divided by their socioeconomic status. The story is told in first-person narrative by protagonist Ponyboy Curtis.

The story in the book takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1965, but this is never stated in the book.

A film adaptation was produced in 1983, and a little-known short-lived television series appeared in 1990, picking up where the movie left off. A stage adaptation was written by Christopher Sergel and published in 1990.