Rand, Ayn

Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957



8vo (215 x 145 mm). Publisher's green cloth in illustrated dust-jacket (with 10/57 on front flap and full publisher's address on rear, priced $7.95); spine slightly faded with a bit of rubbing to gilt title, jacket front panel edges rubbed, some chipping and loss to spine ends of jacket, minor rubbing to fold ends.

Cecil B. De Mille (bookplate)

Spine slightly faded with a bit of rubbing to gilt title, jacket front panel edges rubbed, some chipping and loss to spine ends of jacket, minor rubbing to fold ends.
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First edition, inscribed by Rand before publication to her childhood hero and Hollywood 'mentor" Cecil B. De Mille "To Cecil B. De Mille | Cordially | Ayn Rand | 8-22-57"

Rand was fascinated with film from an early age, her first two works (published in Russia) being essentially film fandom. The few Hollywood spectacles that were shown in Russia provided the teenage Rand with a particularly vibrant escape from the dreariness of the early Soviet Union, none more imaginative to her than the work of De Mille.

A visa to visit America in 1925 placed Rand with relatives in Chicago, movie theatre owners who further fueled her visions of Hollywood with the reels of new releases she could sit through endlessly for free. Armed with a letter of introduction, she traveled to Hollywood in 1926, typewriter and script ideas in hand and turned up at De Mille studios.

Whether Rand determinedly sought out De Mille or he spotted her curious stare from his limousine is still matter for debate (see Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, 1999. pp. 61-62).  Yet certainly within days of her arrival she did meet the director who put her to work as an extra on his current production King of Kings. De Mille later got her junior-level script work and encouraged her larger screenwriting aspirations, until the sale of his studio forced Rand onto a different writing path.

While Rand's opinion of De Mille's work would lessen through later years, she did send him copies of The Fountainhead and We the Living. The former even provoked De Mille to try and lure her from Warner Brother's  when the success of the novel provoked a bidding war between studios.