Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living

Ayn Rand remains a truly significant figure of modern philosophy. Her unique vision of a world in which man, relying on reason, acts wholly for his own good is skillfully developed and illustrated in her most famous novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead . But Rand’s first novel, We the Living , a lesser-known but no less important book, offers an early form of the author’s nascent philosophy―the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism.

Robert Mayhew’s collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand’s writing. In part a history of We the Living , from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew’s collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand’s first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature. For Ayn Rand scholars and fans alike, this collection is a compelling examination of a novel that set the tone for some of the most influential philosophical literature to follow.