The Early Ayn Rand is a collection of unpublished early short stories, plays, and excerpts from We The Living and The Fountainhead, written by Ayn Rand and published after her death in 1984. The collection was compiled and edited by the heir of Rand's estate, Leonard Peikoff, and, although they were never meant to be published, show Rand's development as a writer and a philosopher before she became famous.
Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and her family life was disrupted by the rise of the Bolshevik party.
Rand stated her new name was derived from the Cyrillic spelling of her family's name, and the AynRand Institute noted a similarity between the name Rand and the spelling of "Rosenbaum" in Cyrillic on her college diploma.
Rand's defenders argue that her opposition to government intervention to end private discrimination was motivated by her valuing property rights above civil or "human rights" (due to a rejection of the validity of the distinction) and therefore her view did not constitute an endorsement of the morality of the prejudice per se.
AynRand and Objectivism are the subject of a large literature, both in favor of Objectivist ideals, and critical.
Since Rand regarded herself as an opponent of feminism and indeed regarded "man-worship" ("man" decidedly meaning "male") as the very essence of femininity, it might be expected that feminists would regard Rand as an enemy.
Ryan argues that Rand relied implicitly on a foundation of rationalistic objective idealism to create an explicit philosophy at odds with such idealism, and that in doing so she was primarily motivated by a desire to cleanse philosophy of anything smacking of religion/theism.
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