Literary Giant - Ayn Rand

Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was born on February 2, 1905, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was the oldest of 3 daughters born to Zinovy Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum who were non-practicing Jews. Zinovy was a chemist and a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

Rand taught herself to read at age 6. At the tender age of 9, she decided that writing fiction would be her career. Alisa, while still in Russia, decided on Rand as her professional writing surname and she chose the Finnish name Ayn as her first name. The family fled to the Crimea to escape the rise of the Bolshevik party when she was 12and it was there that she finished high school. They returned to Saint Petersburg when she was 16 and she entered the University of Petrograd, studying philosophy and history. She graduated in 1924 and was oppressed by the restrictions and standards of the communist party. Rand had long enjoyed the cinema so she studied Screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinema Arts. Her first publication was a booklet on Pola Negri, an actress (1925), and another titled “Hollywood: American Movie City” (1926).

In 1925 she obtained a visa to visit relatives in the U.S. The visit was supposed to be a short one but Rand was determined to make it a permanent move. After 6 months with her relatives, she renewed her visa and moved to Hollywood to begin a career as a screen writer. She met Frank Connor whom she married in 1929 and they spent the next 50 years together until he died. The next few years she worked at non-writing jobs. In 1932 she sold her first screenplay, "Red Prawn", to Universal Pictures. Her first stage play, Night of January 16, was produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. We the Living was her first novel. It was based on her years under Soviet tyranny and was the most autobiographical of her novels.

In 1935 she began writing The Fountainhead. She completed the book but it was turned down by twelve publishers before Bobbs-Merrill Company published it in 1943. It became a word of mouth best seller over the next 2 years in spite of the negative remarks by some critics. It gave Rand lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.

Returning to Hollywood she started the screenplay for "The Fountainhead" but because of the war restrictions it would not be produced until 1948. Rand began writing "Atlas Shrugged" in 1946 while working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions. She moved back to New York in 1951 working full time on the novel. It was published in 1957 and is considered Rands magnum opus. It was also her last work of fiction. "Atlas Shrugged" dramatized her own philosophy in an intellectual mystery that covered ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex.

From then on, Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy, "Objectivism". She explained that it was a philosophy for living on earth. She published her own periodicals until 1976 and her essays provided much of the material for 6 books on "Objectivism" and its application to the culture.

Every book by Rand that was published during her life time is still in print. Several new volumes were published after her death. Her expectation of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of countless readers and started a philosophic movement on American culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her New York apartment.