The Early Ayn Rand

The Early Ayn Rand

Cover of the first edition
Editor	Leonard Peikoff
Author	Ayn Rand
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	New American Library
Publication date	1984 (1st ed.) 2005 (revised ed.)
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	383 (1st ed.) 528 (revised ed.)
ISBN	(1st ed.)
OCLC	10457178

The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction is an anthology of unpublished early fiction written by Ayn Rand, first published in 1984, two years after her death. The selections include short stories, plays, and excerpts of material cut from her novels We the Living and The Fountainhead.

Author Ayn Rand died in March 1982, after a long career that included four published novels, two Broadway plays, several produced screenplays, and numerous non-fiction essays and speeches. She left her literary estate, including her unpublished manuscripts, to her longtime friend and protégé Leonard Peikoff. Peikoff compiled a selection of her unpublished fiction into The Early Ayn Rand. Although many of the pieces included were never meant to be published, the collection shows Rand's development as a writer. In the introduction, Peikoff writes he "decided to publish this material because I believe that admirers of Miss Rand will be interested to learn by what steps she developed her literary abilities. They can now see the steps themselves."

This book is volume two of the "Ayn Rand Library" series edited by Peikoff. It was first published in a hardcover edition by New American Library in 1984. They published paperback edition in 1986. A revised and expanded edition was published in 2005.

The first edition begins with four unpublished short stories written in the 1920s. The next section starts with a synopsis of Red Pawn, a 1932 screenplay that was Rand's first professional sale as a writer. This is followed by unpublished excerpts from Rand's first novel, We the Living, which was completed in 1934 and published in 1936. The section ends with a previously unpublished and unproduced play, Ideal, which was written in the mid-1930s. (Ideal was later produced in 1989 by Michael Paxton.)

The third section begins with Think Twice, a theatrical murder mystery written in 1939. Peikoff writes that in conversation about this play, Rand told him "She could not ... write a series of mysteries, because everyone would know who the murderers were." It is followed by unpublished excerpts from Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead.