We the Living

Signed First Revised Edition of Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living (New York: Random House, 1959). A fine copy in a very bright jacket. We the Living follows young Kira Argounova, as close to an autobiographical character as Ayn Rand ever created, from her arrival in St. Petersburg, excited about the "streets of a big city where so much is possible," to her death near the Latvian border, where she smiles "her last smile, to so much that had been possible." Her journey in between contrasts Kira's determined passion for living her life with the living death of the brutally collectivist state. Originally published by Macmillan in 1936 (after twelve publishers' rejections), We the Living was Rand's fulfillment of a promise just before she left the Soviet Union. "One of the guests, whom Ayn knew only slightly, said to her: "If they ask you in America tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying slowly." "I'll tell them," she promised" (Branden, 171). We the Living seemed off to a promising start. Celebrated journalist H L Mencken, whom Rand admired intensely, called it "a really excellent piece of work. The only objection to it is that it is anti-Communist in tone. Most of the American publishers lean toward the Trotskys." His warning was prescient. Leading intellectuals of America's Red Decade openly denounced any work critical of the Soviet Union. "To be a good writer, a man must first become a proper communist," announced Granville Hicks in the prestigious weekly The New Masses. Stuart Chase, in The New Republic, wondered why "the Russians should have all the fun of remaking the world." After Macmillan sold, in 18 months, all 3000 copies of the only American printing of We the Living, the publisher, convinced the novel could no longer sell, destroyed the plates and Rand's promise fulfilled went out of print. We the Living, however, refused to die. The novel continued to enjoy brisk sales in England, published by Cassell, 1936, "the only novel on our list which is still selling at the original price three years later. I knowwe could have a really big success if we could get a new book from her" (Desmond Flower of Cassell, 1940). A Danish translation was published as early as 1941 and sold steadily for at least ten years. (Rand's bibliographer Perinn is incorrect when he cites 1946 as the first Danish printing. We've a Danish copy signed by Rand in '41.) A pirated Italian translation, a "smash hit," according to Rand, served as the basis for a movie popular with Italian audiences until Mussolini himself ordered every copy of the film burned. A stage adaptation, entitled "The Unconquered" appeared briefly in Baltimore and on Broadway in February, 1940. "Can you name another obscure novel--which went unnoticed in this country and so could be considered a flop--that had a history of this kind?" (Rand, quoted in Mayhew, 142). We the Living remained out of print in the US for more than twenty years. Two years after Random House published her final novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), Rand, now more thoroughly conscious of American connotation and precision in punctuation, returned to We the Living. She states in her Foreword to the 1959 revised edition that she had wanted to eliminate "a peculiar kind of uncertainty in the use of the English language, which reflected the transitional state of a mind thinking no longer in Russian, but not yet fully in English." Now Rand had her definitive edition of her first born, her own unqualified, finalized Principia! At last, Ayn Rand could say, as she once said of the publication of one of her plays: "Up to now, I had felt as if it were an illegitimate child roaming the world. Now, with this publication, it becomes legitimately mine." Internally clean and fresh. No writings or markings of any kind save for Rand's inscription on the front flyleaf. Jacket, dazzlingly bright, has a 6.5 thin bluish-green streak on the back panel, else fine.…