Online Study Guide for the Life and Works of Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the young age of six, Rand taught herself to read and by 9 years old, she had chosen writing fiction as a career. Her choice was influenced by her favorite author, Victor Hugo.

Rand lived through the Bolshevik and Communist revolutions. During the Communist Revolution, Rand’s father lost his pharmacy, which pushed her family into poverty and forced them to live near starvation. While Revolution also affected Rand’s education - the university she attended in Crimea was overtaken by the Communist party – she was still able to write. In 1925, she published a booklet about actress Pola Negri.

In 1925, Rand came to the United States on the pretense of visiting relatives for six months. In reality, she had no intent of leaving her new country. In 1926 she published another pamphlet about Hollywood. That same year, she met her husband, Frank O’Connor, when he employed her as an extra and script reader on his movie set. O’Connor and Rand were married in 1929, and remained together for over fifty years.

The pace of Rand’s publishing career escalated beginning in 1932, when she sold her first screenplay. Her first book, We the Living, was published in 1934. In 1935 she published The Fountainhead, her second-most famous novel. Rand published her most prominent work, titled Atlas Shrugged, in 1957. Subsequent to this work, Rand taught and lectured on the topic of objectivism until her death in 1982.

The Fountain Head follows a protagonist as he refuses to comprise his artistic integrity to make it comparable to convention. The novel is a classic take of individualism over social norms. One of the Fountain Head’s main themes is a topic in which Rand believed extensively: objectivism. 

Rand’s second book, Atlas Shrugged, also deals with objectivism. In Atlas Shrugged, U.S. leading innovators refuse to permit their ideas to be curtailed by society. The novel plays with the interplay between creativity and productivity. Throughout the novel, as the government becomes more involved with productivity, the book’s protagonists struggle more to reach their fullest, creative potential. 

Published earlier in her career, in 1938, Anthem tells the story of an individual’s rebellion against a totalitarian regime. The book follows Equality 7-2521 as he commits the ultimate crime: independent thought. The work was written during a break from The Fountainhead.

Rand’s is viewed as both an extra author and philosopher. Liberals view her work as a statement about the importance of free thought; conservatives tend to view Rand’s work as an expression of her distaste for government.

Although critics like to paint Rand as a libertarian, Rand was not affiliated with any political party. Her viewpoints are believed to have impacted the libertarian party by encouraging them to focus on individualism according to her definition.

Rand’s works remain some of the most-widely read works of fiction in contemporary society. The continuous struggle about the amount of control the government should exert makes Rand’s work influential even today.