Ayn Rand

Russian-born American writer, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and other philosophical novels based on her philosophy that she called "Objectivism." She claimed to have taught herself to read at age six. By age nine, fascinated with European style heroes and taken with the works of Victor Hugo, she had decided to be a novelist. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, her family moved to the Crimea to escape the fighting. The Communists confiscated her father's pharmacy and the family was reduced to poverty. In high school as she studied history, the American model of capitalism and freedom appealed to her. After graduation from the University of Petrograd, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screen writing. A year later, she was given permission for a short vacation to visit relatives in the US. In her mind she was escaping the dreary existence of Soviet Russia and vowed never to return. In the summer of 1926, she moved to Hollywood where she was noticed by Cecil B. DeMille who gave her a job as an extra and later a script reader. She met and married actor Frank O'Connor in 1929; the couple remained married until his death on 9 November 1979. In 1932 she sold her first screenplay, "Red Pawn." Her first play "Night of January 16th," was staged on Broadway. "We the Living", her first novel, completed in 1934, did not find a publisher until 1936. A prolific writer, she began writing "The Fountainhead" in 1935, published in 1943. The book celebrates heroic individualism that she so believed in after suffering through the Bolshevik Revolution and Communist rule. She began writing "Atlas Shrugged" in 1946 and moved back to New York in 1951 to complete her book. It was published in 1957 and would become her most famous work as well as her last novel. Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. The book embodies the philosophy she had developed and labelled Objectivism and thereafter she lectured and wrote articles and essays about her beliefs. Rand died on March 6, 1982 of heart failure in her New York City apartment. Link to Wikipedia biography