The Outsiders (novel)

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton published in 1967 by Viking Press. The novel is set in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1960s—although this is never explicitly stated in the book—and details the conflict between two rival gangs of White Americans divided by their socioeconomic status: the working-class "greasers" and the upper-middle-class "Socs" (pronounced SOH-shiz—short for Socials). The story is told in first-person perspective by teenage protagonist Ponyboy Curtis. Hinton began writing the novel when she was 15 and wrote the bulk of it when she was 16 and a junior in high school.