
The Early Ayn Rand
A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction (Revised Edition)
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.46
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Bernadette Dunne
-
By:
-
Ayn Rand
About this listen
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Three Plays
- Night of January 16, Ideal, and Think Twice
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published together for the first time are three of Ayn Rand's compelling stage plays. The courtroom drama Night of January 16th, a 1935 Broadway success famous for leaving the verdict to the audience, is presented here in its definitive, final revised text - a superb dramatization of Rand's vision of human strengths and weaknesses.
-
-
Loved it! Truly compelling, imaginative and intelligent storytelling. A feast for the senses and the imagination!Ayn Rand shines
- By Miguel Cruz on 03-30-19
By: Ayn Rand
-
Ideal
- The Novel and the Play
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane, Robin Field
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally conceived as a novel but then transformed into a play by Ayn Rand, Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run and turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal - a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul.
-
-
Budding Rand
- By Anthony on 07-07-15
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Virtue of Selfishness
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: C. M. Hernert
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life - the life proper to a rational being - as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with human nature, with the creative requirement of survival, and with a free society.
-
-
Beyond brilliant
- By R. Aiken on 10-29-03
By: Ayn Rand
-
We the Living
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Mary Woods
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three people who demand the right to live their own lives. At its center is a girl whose passionate love is her fortress against the cruelty and oppression of a totalitarian state. Rand said of this book: "It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write."
-
-
Emotionally intense, historically authentic
- By Geoffrey on 08-14-08
By: Ayn Rand
-
Return of the Primitive
- The Anti-Industrial Revolution
- By: Ayn Rand, Peter Schwartz
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1960s and early '70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.
-
-
Extreemly relevant to our current climate
- By Mica on 01-18-10
By: Ayn Rand, and others
-
Ayn Rand Answers
- The Best of Her Q & A
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order to bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed added not only an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs, but a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself.
-
-
It sounds like Ayn Rand
- By Anonymous User on 06-09-18
By: Ayn Rand
-
Three Plays
- Night of January 16, Ideal, and Think Twice
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published together for the first time are three of Ayn Rand's compelling stage plays. The courtroom drama Night of January 16th, a 1935 Broadway success famous for leaving the verdict to the audience, is presented here in its definitive, final revised text - a superb dramatization of Rand's vision of human strengths and weaknesses.
-
-
Loved it! Truly compelling, imaginative and intelligent storytelling. A feast for the senses and the imagination!Ayn Rand shines
- By Miguel Cruz on 03-30-19
By: Ayn Rand
-
Ideal
- The Novel and the Play
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane, Robin Field
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally conceived as a novel but then transformed into a play by Ayn Rand, Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run and turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal - a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul.
-
-
Budding Rand
- By Anthony on 07-07-15
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Virtue of Selfishness
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: C. M. Hernert
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand here sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, the philosophy that holds human life - the life proper to a rational being - as the standard of moral values and regards altruism as incompatible with human nature, with the creative requirement of survival, and with a free society.
-
-
Beyond brilliant
- By R. Aiken on 10-29-03
By: Ayn Rand
-
We the Living
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Mary Woods
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three people who demand the right to live their own lives. At its center is a girl whose passionate love is her fortress against the cruelty and oppression of a totalitarian state. Rand said of this book: "It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write."
-
-
Emotionally intense, historically authentic
- By Geoffrey on 08-14-08
By: Ayn Rand
-
Return of the Primitive
- The Anti-Industrial Revolution
- By: Ayn Rand, Peter Schwartz
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1960s and early '70s, the most prominent, vocal cultural movement was the New Left: a movement that condemned America and everything it stood for: individualism, material wealth, science, technology, capitalism.
-
-
Extreemly relevant to our current climate
- By Mica on 01-18-10
By: Ayn Rand, and others
-
Ayn Rand Answers
- The Best of Her Q & A
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order to bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed added not only an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ideas and beliefs, but a fresh and spontaneous insight into Ayn Rand herself.
-
-
It sounds like Ayn Rand
- By Anonymous User on 06-09-18
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Romantic Manifesto
- A Philosophy of Literature
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, she demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let conventional ideas define her sense of the truth. Rand eloquently asserts that one cannot create art without infusing it with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy - even an attempt to withhold moral overtones only results in a deterministic or naturalistic message.
-
-
Essential AYN
- By Mica on 07-15-08
By: Ayn Rand
-
Philosophy
- Who Needs It
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who needs philosophy? Ayn Rand's answer: Everyone. This collection of essays was the last work planned by Ayn Rand before her death in 1982. In it, she summarizes her view of philosophy and deals with a broad spectrum of topics. According to Ayn Rand, the choice we make is not whether to have a philosophy, but which one to have: a rational, conscious, and therefore practical one, or a contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal one.
-
-
Deep and provocative
- By Sierra Bravo on 05-21-09
By: Ayn Rand
-
Anthem
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Length: 2 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil.” Deep issues of conscience are explored in Ayn Rand’s dystopian tale of a man who dares to fight against a system that invades his very mind and identity.
-
-
Triumphant! A beautiful molding of the mind.
- By Kari on 02-17-16
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Voice of Reason
- Essays in Objectivist Thought
- By: Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand's life, they reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor.
-
-
Explains Everything Of Today
- By L. Nicholson on 11-20-15
By: Ayn Rand, and others
-
For the New Intellectual
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is Ayn Rand's challenge to the prevalent philosophical doctrines of our time and the "atmosphere of guilt, of panic, of despair, of boredom, and of all-pervasive evasion" that they create. One of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn Rand was the proponent of a moral philosophy, an ethic of rational self-interest, that stands in sharp opposition to the ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice.
-
-
Rehashed narrative and bad ideas.
- By Avid reader on 08-11-05
By: Ayn Rand
-
Capitalism
- The Unknown Ideal
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.
-
-
Ashame this is not taught in our
- By Karen on 08-18-07
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Fountainhead
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 32 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the 20th century's most challenging novels of ideas, The Fountainhead champions the cause of individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who defies the tyranny of conventional public opinion. The struggle for personal integrity in a world that values conformity above creativity is powerfully illustrated through three characters: Howard Roarke, a genius; Gail Wynand, a newspaper mogul and self-made millionaire; and Dominique Francon, a devastating beauty.
-
-
The Fountainhead
- By Zachary on 06-04-10
By: Ayn Rand
-
End of the Road
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Ayn Rand
- Length: 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand presents her views of the world, politics, and human thought.
-
-
Ouch.
- By toromei on 09-21-13
By: Ayn Rand
-
Atlas Shrugged
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 62 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts? In defense of those greatest of human qualities that have made civilization possible, one man sets out to show what would happen to the world if all the heroes of innovation and industry went on strike.
-
-
Hurt version decidedly superior
- By Mica on 03-24-09
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Art of Nonfiction
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rand takes listeners step by step through the writing process, providing insightful observations and invaluable techniques along the way. She discusses the psychological aspects of writing and the roles played by the conscious and subconscious mind. She talks about articles and books, explaining how to select a subject and theme, how to identify your audience, and how to write the first draft.
-
-
Great Content, but the narrator is annoying
- By Ms on 01-26-09
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Great Gatsby
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: Jake Gyllenhaal
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby....
-
-
Simple, Beautiful, and Exquisitely Textured
- By Darwin8u on 04-09-13
-
The Art of Fiction
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style, the four essential elements of fiction. Here, too, are Rand's illuminating analyses of passages from famous writers, rewrites of scenes from her own works, and fascinating rules for building dramatic plots and characters with depth.
-
-
Get Stein on Writing
- By Lois on 12-04-09
By: Ayn Rand
What listeners say about The Early Ayn Rand
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 11-05-18
Great gems
There were some great gems in this book. My favorite was the parts that were cut away from The Fountainhead. Clearly not a book for people new to Ayn Rand, but for those very familiar with her work it's great.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John
- 12-03-11
Want more Rand? Here it is.
I find "Early Ayn Rand" to be well edited and well organized with helpful introductions to each work by Leonard Peikoff. The introductions are so good that readers can skip "Art of Fiction" by Rand because "Early Ayn Rand" contains the same concepts in more concise form.
I disagree with Mr. Peikoff's recommendation to read Rand's novels first and these early works second. A serious thinker who wants to understand Rand and never read anything by her could best understand her philosophy by reading the works in chronological order, starting with "Early Ayn Rand" and ending with her masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged."
Most of the works in the "Early Ayn Rand" anthology were not intended for publication and therefore are best used to observe the process by which Rand developed her writing skills and her philosophy in steps over several decades. The works begin as short and entertaining theatrical bits but gradually get more philosophical.
Here are the works included:
1920's works
(1) The Husband I Bought - first person with a protagonist who is a woman in love
(2) The Night King - first person with a protagonist who is a male thief
(3) Good Copy - action and romance
(4) Escort - very short
(5) Her Second Career - about the difficulty of succeeding in Hollywood
1930's works
(6) Red Pawn - getting more philosophical now, about the stupidity of self-sacrifice
(7) We the Living (deleted sections) - not so great
(8) Ideal - written as a play, excellent philosophically
(9) Think Twice - written as a play, excellent philosophically
(10) Fountainhead (deleted sections) - excellent, Rourke's old girlfriend Vesta Dunning and their opposing philosophies
1940's work
(11) The Simplest Thing in the World - common human trait of striving to put other people down
Regarding the "Audible" version: The narration by Bernadette Dunne is excellent. However, stories (2) and (3) should have been narrated by a man.
John Christmas, author of "Democracy Society"
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
9 people found this helpful