FABULOUS FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE OF ‘ATLAS SHRUGGED” INSCRIBED BY AYN RAND.
First edition of one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century. Large octavo, original green cloth, spine stamped in black and gilt. Presentation copy, inscribed “To Barbara Masterson, Cordially, Ayn Rand 2/14/67.”
Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. First Edition, First Printing of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, her hymn to the men and women of unbound mind and unborrowed vision, in a dazzling dust jacket protected in a clamshell box. “I know that I am challenging the cultural tradition of two and one half thousand years,” Rand observed at a sales meeting preceding the publication of Atlas Shrugged. Her novel delivers. Presented within a gripping, page-turning story of the “men of the mind” going on strike against an altruist/collectivist society, Rand s novel defines a revolutionary new code of ethics — “the morality of rational self-interest,” she dubbed it — and validates for the first time a moral defense of capitalism and the political system of America’s Founding Fathers. The novel raises and answers questions on the nature, source, and validation of morality. “Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the . . . purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?” (Atlas Shrugged). In her title essay For the New Intellectual (Random House, 1959), Rand would elaborate: “The world crisis of today is a moral crisis– and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution.” Indeed many commentators refer to Atlas Shrugged as America’s Declaration of Moral Independence. “From 1943 until its publication in 1957, [Rand] worked on the book that many say is her masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged. This novel describes how a genius named John Galt grows weary of supporting a society of ungrateful parasites and one day simply shrugs and walks away. He becomes an inspiration to like-minded men and women, all of whom eventually follow his example, until society, in its agony, calls them back to responsibility and respect. Again [as with Rand’s novel The Fountainhead in 1943] reviews were unsympathetic, and again, people bought the book” (ANB). Rand’s all-time bestseller has now sold more than ten million copies and was named by readers in the Modern Library as the greatest novel of the 20th Century. This copy is fine. Beautiful, unclipped, unchipped first issue jacket. Protected in a sturdy leather/cloth custom clamshell box. “Man the rational being has found his spokesman and defender, and has been released from his moral underground. That is the imperishable achievement of Ayn Rand” (Branden, 65).
