Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead (Presentation copy). New York: Signet Books, 1952. First printing paperback edition. Perinn A.3e. Inscribed by Ayn Rand to her Signet publisher: "To Kurt Enoch - wishing you a great success on your triple volumes, with pleasure at being the first of them - Cordially - Ayn Rand 5/6/1952." An historic inscription by Rand within a month of publication. Book Near Fine with only slight wear at the spine.

“I know the nature of this novel. I do not care to become famous for any other” (Ayn Rand, speaking of The Fountainhead shortly after publication with New York Herald Tribune columnist Isabel Paterson, 1943).

The Fountainhead, her third novel, became Rand’s breakthrough novel and first bestseller, the novel that would indeed make her famous. The Fountainhead chronicles the life of an independent architect of genius, struggling to make a career against a society committed to tradition and mediocrity. It celebrates the glory of personal integrity and defines a new morality of individualism. What she became famous for was Ayn Rand - the Individualist -- Ayn Rand - Liberator of the inviolate, creative, reasoning mind -- Ayn Rand - Champion of stainless personal integrity – Ayn Rand – Creator of the first unbowed man of unborrowed vision.

Originally published in 1943 by Bobbs Merrill, The Fountainhead first became a bestseller in 1945, and it reappeared as a bestseller in 1949, when Warner Bros. released the motion picture “The Fountainhead.” By 1952, when this Signet Triple Volume paperback edition appeared, The Fountainhead had sold more than half a million copies. (Branden, 1962).

While Signet’s triple volume format would typically include three works by a single author or three related themes, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was, as Rand’s inscription makes clear, the first Signet Triple Volume book published – and the first paperback edition of Rand’s hardcover bestseller.

From the library of Kurt Enoch, (1896-1982), the “Paperback Pioneer,” a paperback innovator in his native Germany before fleeing Hitler in 1936. He helped Ian Ballantine initiate Penguin in the US, became its president, and then, with Victor Weybright, launched New American Library of World Literature in 1947, publishing a wide range of contemporary and classic titles under its NAL, Signet, and Mentor imprints. In effect Enoch created the mass market paperback, offering works of many great authors to a younger generation as well as to underrepresented reading demographics.

From the outset, Enoch asked his authors to inscribe their paperback editions to him. Over the next two decades, he amassed a unique collection, which grew to more than a thousand volumes. Paperbacks with such historic association are rarely found signed by their authors. Other signatories include William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Flannery O'Connor, C.G. Jung, John Steinbeck, James M. Cain, John Le Carre, Mickey Spillane, John Howard Griffin, Richard Wright, and Martin Luther King. For these reasons, Enoch’s collection is both exceptional and historic.

As the first book offered to the public under Enoch’s seminal imprint, this first edition paperback copy of The Fountainhead, inscribed to its publisher, underscores its unique, groundbreaking position.

Book #vB1323. $7000.