SIGNED First Edition. Bobbs-Merrill (1943). Octavo, original maroon cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. "I know the nature of this novel," announced Ayn Rand to Isabel Paterson upon publication of The Fountainhead. "I do not care to become famous for any other" (Branden, 177). 

SIGNED First Edition, First Printing of Rand's breakthrough bestseller, her enduring celebration of the individual spirit -- its timeless theme, "individualism vs. collectivism, not in politics but in man's soul" -- in its extraordinarily rare first-state dust jacket with back panel listing of 16 Bobbs-Merrill books. Perinn A3a.

In The Fountainhead, "Rand has taken her stand against collectivism, 'the rule of the second-hander, the ancient monster' which has brought men 'to a level of indecency never equaled on earth'. She has written a hymn in praise of the individual" (Pruette, 1943). When Rand began writing her first notes for The Fountainhead in 1935, before her first novel, We the Living, was published, she knew she had set for herself a unique, unprecedented literary and philosophical goal: the projection of her ideal man, the creative, unsubmissive man of unborrowed vision, of self-sufficient ego -- and "a defense of egoism in its real meaning" (Notes, 1935). By 1937, as she began writing the novel, her royalties from We the Living had dried up; Macmillan destroyed the type after selling all 3000 copies of its first printing. After completing one-third of her new novel, Rand hoped to procure a $1200 advance from a publisher, allowing her to work full-time on "Second Hand Lives," her original title for the novel. Instead, the novel was rejected by twelve publishers, "some of whom declared it was 'too intellectual," 'too controversial,' and would not sell because no audience existed for it" (Rand, Introduction to The Fountainhead, 1968). Rand, armed with the iron determination of her hero Roark, represented the novel herself after firing her literary agent. In 1941, she secured a $1000 advance from Indianapolis-based Bobbs-Merrill. Rand devoted herself throughout 1942 to completing the manuscript. The Fountainhead was published on May 7, 1943. (Lisi: "The Fountainhead's Long Road to Publication", 2024) Because of the imminent paper shortage during the war, Bobbs-Merrill issued a series of small early printings until 1945 when the novel became a soaring bestseller. In first Edition, First Printing, First State, it remains one of Rand's most difficult and rarest acquisitions. 

This Signed Stated "First Edition" copy -- a first, First, FIRST! -- near-fine with no writings or markings of any kind save for Rand's inscription on the title page. Housed in a sturdy custom clamshell box. Book #vBP1404. $95,000. From one of the world's finest essential Ayn Rand and other landmark books collections.