The Fountainhead

This centennial edition of "The Fountainhead," celebrating the controversial and enduring legacy of its author, features an afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, offering some of Ayn Rand's personal notes on the development of her masterwork, and a Reader's Guide to her writings and philosophy.

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. During her high school years, she was witness to the Kerensky Revolution overthrowing the Czar, which she supported, and the Bolshevik Revolution instituting communism, which she opposed. During the Russian Civil War, Rand's family fled to the Crimea; once communist victory became incontestable, she returned, studying philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd. In late 1925, she obtained permission to visit the United States, determined never again to return to her native land. Working in Hollywood as an extra and a script reader, Any Rand met and married actor Frank O'Connor and began writing her first novel, the auto-biographical We, the Living, about her struggles under totalitarianism. That work, appearing in 1936 during the heyday of communism's popularity in the United States, was not at first a success. The Fountainhead, however, which was published in 1943, catapulted Rand to international fame. She further articulated its renowned themes in Atlas Shrugged (1957) and continued to promote her philosophy, which she called Objectivism, until her death in March 1982. To this day, all of her books remain in print and have sold over twenty million copies worldwide. Any Rand founded the Ayn Rand Institute in Los Angeles to carry on her legacy.