The Fountainhead | Ayn Rand Biography

Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905 to Fronz (a chemist) and Anna. Alisa taught herself to read at age six and by age nine, she determined that she would become a writer of idealist heroes like those created by Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo. The family fled the Bolshevik Revolution soon after it began in 1917 and relocated to the Crimea. The Communists confiscated her father's business and, as a result, the family was thrown into poverty. During this period she studied American history and became enthralled with the democratic system, which would have a profound effect on her fiction. When she and her family returned to Russia, she began studies in philosophy and history at the University of Petrograd where she graduated in 1924. That same year, her passion for films prompted her to enroll in the State Institute for Cinema Arts where she studied screen writing.

Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand

In 1925, she was granted permission to leave Russia to visit relatives, but she would never return to her homeland. She stayed in New York City for six months, extended her visa, and then moved to Hollywood where she changed her name and hoped to start a career as a screenwriter. Rand met Cecil B. DeMille on her second day in California, and the movie mogul immediately offered her a job as an extra and then a script reader on his film King of Kings. A week later she met actor Frank O'Connor, who became her husband until his death fifty years later.

During the next few years Rand worked in various studio positions including in the wardrobe department until she sold her first screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal Studios in 1932. Her play Night of January 16th was produced first in Hollywood and later on Broadway. In 1933, she completed her first novel, We the Living, which was rejected by several publishers until Macmillan agreed to accept the manuscript in 1936. The book, a fictional representation of her life in Russia after the communist takeover, was not well received by the public or critics. The previous year, she began writing The Fountainhead, determined to create her vision of an ideal hero. After twelve publishers rejected it, the novel was finally published in 1943, and within two years it had become a best-seller.

The Fountainhead, along with her popular last novel, Atlas Shrugged, expresses the philosophy she termed objectivism, which she would outline in lectures and essays from 1962 through 1976. During the last decades of her life she became a popular and controversial public philosopher, speaker, and cult figure. Her death in New York City on March 6, 1982 triggered new public and academic interest in her life, fiction, and her objectivist movement.

Dictionary Tip:

Lookup any word on eNotes with our dictionary. Highlight the word and press SHIFT + D for a definition, or SHIFT + T for a synonym.