New York: Ayn Rand publishes The Fountainhead.
Iconoclast philosopher/writer Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinov’ yevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, 38 years earlier, publishes The Fountainhead, one of literature’s all–time great classics… after 12 major publishers reject the manuscript…. Rand lived on east 34th Street in Manhattan (near current–day Stern College of Yeshiva University).
The Fountainhead was to be followed 14 years later by her second mega–classic, Atlas Shrugged (1957).
In reference to her philosophy of “Objectivism,” which she crafted, Rand articulated: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of Man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
(Appendix to Atlas Shrugged)
(Author’s note: By Rand’s philosophy, only actions which did not infringe upon other’s rights and property, were acceptable, of course…)
Ayn Rand was a full–fledged enthusiast of Jeffersonian Democracy and called America, in an address to the West Point graduating class of cadets, “…the greatest and noblest…country in the history of the world.” This definitive viewpoint would be shared by many of her European and Russian émigré Jewish–American compatriots – and their descendants.
(b. 1905; d. 1982).