SIGNED First Edition, First Printing of Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1969). A spectacular example of the book and jacket, the finest we've ever seen, signed, inscribed and dated by Rand in the month of publication. Housed in a custom leatherette-linen clamshell box. Rare signed and inscribed, especially so in Very Fine condition. 

No less radical than her advocacy of the virtue of selfishness is Ayn Rand's theory of art, which pierces the fog of subjectivism and sentimentality that have engulfed esthetic theory to explain why, since time immemorial, human beings have created and consumed works of art. "An artist reveals his naked soul in his work -- and so, gentle reader, do you when you respond to it" (55).

 In this series of ground-breaking essays, Rand defines the nature and source of art, demonstrates the soul-sustaining value art has for human survival, and lays the foundation of a rational esthetics. With essays on the esthetics of literature and the other arts, The Romantic Manifesto demonstrates the incomparable value of Romanticism, to which she gives her own incomparable definition. "Romanticism is the category of art based on the recognition that man possesses the faculty of volition" (81). 

Unique within the Rand corpus, The Romantic Manifesto unites both Ayn Rand the artist and Ayn Rand the philosopher with Ayn Rand the creator of art and Ayn Rand the consumer of art. Step-by-step, she leads us to her ruthlessly logical definition of art as "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments" (22). To demonstrate "metaphysical value-judgments," she uses examples drawn from art history, as well as her own inexhaustible imagination as an artist and consumer of art. "If one saw, in real life, a beautiful woman wearing an exquisite evening gown, with a cold sore on her lips, the blemish would mean nothing but a minor affliction, and one would ignore it. But a painting of such a woman would be a corrupt, obscenely vicious attack on man, on beauty, on all values" (43). 

While Rand shows us the psychological mechanisms at work in artistic creation and response, that art teaches us how to use our consciousness by showing us what is important, she rejects the notion that the primary purpose of art is didactic. The primary purpose of art, she holds, is not to teach, but to show. The pleasure of contemplating art, she observes, is an end in itself, "a pleasure so intense, so deeply personal that a man experiences it as self sufficient" (19). That contemplation, with the pleasure that attends it, serves a demonstrable need of the human consciousness. "Art is inextricably tied to man's survival" (19).

 Finally, in The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand, the discouraged but ever-determined consumer of art, raises a clarion call for a Renaissance of the ideals that informed the Romantic movements of the nineteenth century. "Will we see an esthetic Renaissance in our time? I do not know. What I do know is this: anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today" (11).

 Among the most difficult Rand firsts to find, signed first edition copies of The Romantic Manifesto are missing from many Rand collections. In more than half a century of collecting Ayn Rand, this is by far the finest Signed First of RM we've ever beheld. You'll never find a finer copy! Book #Bv1405. $5200. From a world-class Ayn Rand collection, which includes signed first edition copies of all of her books in unmatched condition.