The majority of Rand’s time and efforts were centred around her writing through which she expressed her passion for her philosophy. Rand wrote four novels, which are still in print today (as are all her published works – as well as those which were not published by her). We the Living (first published in 1936) was the most autobiographical of her novels as it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny. It was her second novel, The Fountainhead, however, that gained her “lasting recognition as a champion of individualism” and was her first major breakthrough in projecting her philosophically “ideal man” in novel form. The theme described in Anthem (1938) was “the meaning and glory of man’s ego,” which reflected her reverence for man and man’s ego. The novel that best captured Rand’s complete philosophy was “dramatized in the form of a mystery story ‘not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder – and rebirth – of a man’s spirit'” in 1957 in Atlas Shrugged.1 She considered her work in communicating her philosophy to the world complete after it received much of the same criticism that The Fountainhead had. Rand felt that it wasn’t understood and should be recognized as the greatest novel of all time and in fact some held that it was.2 “However, the attacks significantly outnumbered the raves” (202). Despite the fact that public opinion seemed to dislike it, the book made incredible sales, and remained on The New York Times best-seller list for a long time.
Other fictional works of Rand include a play titled Night of January 16th (1934) and a collection of short stories published by Peikoff two year’s after Rand’s death titled The Early Ayn Rand (1984) which includes passages cut from The Fountainhead.3
Rand also printed many non-fiction works in The Objectivist Newsletter, which began publication in January 1962.4 It was co-owned by Rand and Branden, who were listed as publishers and editors with Barbara Branden as the managing editor.5
Works Cited:
- “An Objectivist Bibliography.” The Ayn Rand Institute. (Pamphlet).
- Branden, Nathaniel. My Years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999.
- “An Objectivist Bibliography”. [↩]
- MYAR, 199-205. [↩]
- “An Objectivist Bibliography”. Branden states in My Years with Ayn Rand that these were never intended to be published, as well as several other “highly personal” notes of Rand’s which were taken from her journals (364). [↩]
- MYAR, 261. [↩]
- ibid, 255) Many articles from this were published in later non-fiction works such as For the New Intellectual (1961), The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), Introduction Epistemology (1967), The Romantic Manifesto (1969) and The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971).
Published after her death by Peikoff were the following non-fiction books: Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982), The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z (1986), The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought (1989), The Ayn Rand Column (1991), Ayn Rand’s Marginalia (1995), Letters of Ayn Rand (1995) and most recently in 1997 Journals of Ayn Rand. Many other essays and articles were published in The Objectivist Newsletter (1962-1965), which became The Objectivist (1966-1971) and later from 1971-1976 The Ayn Rand Letter. ((“An Objectivist Bibliography”. [↩]
