RAND, AYN

Single page from Ayn Rand’s handwritten first draft of her influential final novel Atlas Shrugged. N.d., but early 1950s, likely 1951, given the known chronology of composition. 10 3/4 x 7 1/2 inches (27.25 x 19 cm); 16 lines written in fountain-pen ink by Rand, numbered "197" at the top, with several substantive corrections in her hand. Handsomely framed with a reproduction of the portrait of Rand, as she appeared on the dust jacket of the published book.

This is a page from one of the key scenes in the book, the exchange between the main protagonist Dagny Taggart, and her antagonist Lillian Rearden, after she learns of Dagny’s affair with her husband, Hank Rearden. The corrected text reads "went 'It was I,' said Lillian, ‘who took Rearden Metal away from him.’ It sounded almost like a plea. It was not within the power of Dagney’s consciousness ever to know what it was that Lillian had hoped to find in her face; she knew only that she had not found it, when she heard the sudden sharpness of Lillian’s voice: ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then no further explanations are necessary; only the reminder that all the factual evidence—hotel registers, jewelry bills and stuff [...]”

This is one of the 29 pages of authorial manuscript from the first draft of the novel that were retained by Barbara Branden, who was Ayn Rand's assistant. All of these leaves are from chapters two and three of Part III, "The Utopia of Greed" and "Anti-Greed." Most of the balance of the manuscript was destroyed after transcription. The present leaf comes from the latter chapter, in which the Lillian Rearden character blackmails the heroine to make a public announcement endorsing a collectivist government. The Library of Congress holds the final manuscript, thus any portion of the manuscript in Rand's hand is of the utmost rarity. Offered with a photographic reprint of a pastel portrait of Rand.

Provenance: Barbara Branden, Ayn Rand's assistant and an apostle of Rand's Objectivist movement; sold RR auction, lot 1060, September 16, 2014 (then offered pre-certified by PSA/DNA), $42,109; sold to the present owner.