The Early Ayn Rand

The Early Ayn Rand

File:The Early Ayn Rand (cover).jpg Centennial edition cover
Editor	Leonard Peikoff
Author	Ayn Rand
Country	United States
Language	English
Published	1984 (New American Library, 1st ed.) 2005 (revised ed.)
Media type	Print
Pages	383 (hardcover 1st ed.) 434 (paperback 1st ed.) 528 (paperback revised ed.)
ISBN	0-453-00465-2 (hardcover 1st ed.)
OCLC	10457178
Dewey Decimal	813.52
LC Class	PS

The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction is an anthology of unpublished early fiction written by Ayn Rand, first published in 1984, two years after her death. The selections include short stories, plays, and excerpts of material cut from her novels We the Living and The Fountainhead.

Publishing history

The collection was compiled and edited by the heir of Rand's estate, Leonard Peikoff. Although many of the pieces included were never meant to be published, the collection shows Rand's development as a writer. In the introduction, Peikoff writes he "decided to publish this material because I believe that admirers of Miss Rand will be interested to learn by what steps she developed her literary abilities. They can now see the steps themselves."

This book is volume two of the "Ayn Rand Library" series edited by Peikoff. It was first published in a hardcover edition by New American Library in 1984. They published paperback edition in 1986. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2005.

Contents

The first edition begins with four unpublished short stories written in the 1920s. The next section starts with a synopsis of Red Pawn, a screenplay that was Rand's first professional sale as a writer. This is followed by unpublished excerpts from Rand's first novel We the Living, and a previously unpublished and unproduced play, Ideal. (The play was later produced in 1989 by Michael Paxton.)

The third section begins with Think Twice, a murder mystery. Peikoff writes that in conversation about this play, Rand told him "She could not ... ever write a series of mysteries, because everyone would know who the murderers were." It is followed by unpublished excerpts from Rand's novel The Fountainhead.

The revised edition adds two short stories: the previously unpublished story "The Night King", and "The Simplest Thing in the World" (previously published in The Objectivist and in Rand's book The Romantic Manifesto).

Reception

Upon its initial publication in 1984, the book received only a few reviews, which were mostly positive. These included reviews in the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit Free Press.

Looking back on the book years later, Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein said reading it is "a pleasurable experience" that shows Rand's "nascent virtuosity". In her article about Rand for Contemporary Women Philosophers, Jenny Heyl said the selections show Rand's "strong flair for the dramatic" and foreshadow themes from her later work.