 In the 1940s , Salinger confided to several people that he was working on a novel featuring Holden Caulfield , the teenage protagonist of his short story " Slight Rebellion off Madison " , and The Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16 , 1951 , by Little , Brown and Company . The novel 's plot is simple , detailing 16 @-@ year @-@ old Holden 's experiences in New York City following his expulsion and departure from an elite college preparatory school . Not only was he expelled from his current school , he had also been expelled from three previous schools . The book is more notable for the persona and testimonial voice of its first @-@ person narrator , Holden . He serves as an insightful but unreliable narrator who expounds on the importance of loyalty , the " phoniness " of adulthood , and his own duplicity . In a 1953 interview with a high school newspaper , Salinger admitted that the novel was " sort of " autobiographical , explaining , " My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book ... [ I ] t was a great relief telling people about it . " 
