We the Living

Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, then capital of the Russian Empire, to a bourgeois family whose property was expropriated by the Bolshevik government after the 1917 Russian Revolution.[3] Concerned about her safety due to her strong anti-communist views, Rand's family helped her emigrate to the United States in 1926.[4] She moved to Hollywood, where she obtained a job as a junior screenwriter and also worked on other writing projects.[5] In 1929 she began a novel under the working title Airtight: A Novel of Red Russia; it drew on her experiences to depict life in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and criticize the Soviet government and communist ideology.[6]

Ayn Rand completed the novel in 1934.

The novel was first completed in 1934. Despite support from H. L. Mencken, who deemed it "a really excellent piece of work",[7][8] it was rejected by several publishers until September 1935, when George Platt Brett of Macmillan Publishing agreed to publish it. Brett's decision was not without controversy within Macmillan. Associate editor Granville Hicks, then a member of the American Communist Party, was strongly opposed to publishing Rand's novel. Rand later said that Brett was unsure whether the novel would turn a profit, but he thought it was a book that ought to be published. The first edition was issued on April 7, 1936.[1][9]

The initial American publication of We the Living was not a commercial success. Macmillan did not expect the novel to sell and did little marketing.[10] Initial sales were slow and although they picked up later, Macmillan destroyed the plates before the first printing of 3000 copies sold out. Eighteen months after its release, the novel was out of print.[11] Rand's royalties from the first American edition amounted to $100.[12]

There was also a British publication by Cassell in January 1937, and editions were published in Denmark and Italy. These did considerably better than the American release, remaining in print into the 1940s.[13]

In 1957, Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged became a best-seller for Random House. Its success motivated them to republish We the Living in 1959. In preparation for the new edition, Rand made some changes to the text. In her foreword to the revised edition, Rand declared that "In brief, all the changes are merely editorial line changes."[14] Rand's description notwithstanding, some of the changes have been taken to have philosophical significance. In the first edition,[15] Kira said to Andrei, "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods." In the second edition, this became simply "I loathe your ideals." A few pages later, Kira said to Andrei, "What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"[16] Rand's revision deleted this sentence.[17]

The significance of these and other revisions has been debated. Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein commented, "She claims that the revision was minimal. Some readers of both editions have questioned her definition of 'minimal'."[18] According to Ronald Merrill, Kira in the first edition "adopts in the most explicit terms possible the ethical position of Friedrich Nietzsche".[19] Rand had made her break with Nietzsche by the time she published The Fountainhead. Canadian writer Barbara Branden said that "Some of her readers were disturbed when they discovered this and similar changes",[20] but insisted that "unlike Nietzsche, she rejected as unforgivably immoral any suggestion that the superior man had the right to use physical force as a means to his end."[21] Robert Mayhew cautioned that "We should not conclude too quickly that these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in Ayn Rand's development, because such language can be strictly metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)".[22] Susan Love Brown countered that "Mayhew becomes an apologist for Rand's denials of change and smooths over the fact that Rand herself saw the error of her ways and corrected them."[23]

Nearly everyone who reads We the Living today reads the second edition. The first is a rare book; the second has sold over three million copies.[2]

• 1936, Macmillan, hardback
• 1937, Cassell, hardback
• 1959, revised edition, Random House, hardback
• 1960, revised edition, New American Library, paperback
• 1996, 60th Anniversary edition, New American Library ISBN 0-451-18784-9, paperback
• 2011, 75th Anniversary edition, Signet, paperback

Shortly after the novel was published, Rand began negotiations with Broadway producer Jerome Mayer to do a theatrical adaptation.[35] Rand wrote the script, but Mayer's financing fell through.[36] Several years later, she was able to interest George Abbott in producing the play. Helen Craig took the lead role as Kira, alongside John Emery as Leo and Dean Jagger as Andrei. It opened under the title The Unconquered at the Biltmore Theatre on February 13, 1940, but closed just five days later after scathing reviews.[37][38]

The play was not published during Rand's lifetime. In 2014, Palgrave Macmillan published a volume with both the final script and an earlier version, edited by Robert Mayhew.[39]

Alida Valli starred in the film adaptation.

We the Living was published in an Italian translation in 1937. Without Rand's permission, it was adapted in 1942 as an Italian film, released in two parts, titled Noi Vivi (We the Living) and Addio Kira (Goodbye Kira). The films were directed by Goffredo Alessandrini for Scalera Films of Rome, and starred Alida Valli as Kira, Fosco Giachetti as Andrei, and Rossano Brazzi as Leo. Prior to their release, the films were nearly censored by Mussolini's government, but they were permitted because the story itself was set in Soviet Russia and was directly critical of that regime. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against fascism as communism. After several weeks, German authorities, who were allied with the Italian government, insisted that the film be pulled from distribution because of its anti-Fascist themes.

Rediscovered in the 1960s through the efforts of Rand's lawyers, Erika Holzer and Henry Mark Holzer, these films were re-edited into a new version with English subtitles composed by Erika Holzer and revision co-producer Duncan Scott. This version, approved by Rand and her estate, was re-released as We the Living in 1986.[40]

• Baker, James T. (1987). Ayn Rand. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-7497-1.
• Branden, Barbara (1986). The Passion of Ayn Rand. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-19171-5.
• Britting, Jeff (2004). Ayn Rand. Overlook Illustrated Lives series. New York: Overlook Duckworth. ISBN 1-58567-406-0.
• Brown, Susan Love (Fall 2006). "Essays on Ayn Rand's Fiction". The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. 8 (1): 63–84. JSTOR 41560335.
• Burns, Jennifer (2009). Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532487-7.
• Catton, Bruce (April 26, 1936). "A Book a Day: We the Living". Bluefield Daily Telegraph. Vol. 44, no. 85. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com.
• Gladstein, Mimi Reisel (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30321-5.
• Haylen, Leslie (February 6, 1937). "Woman's Book on Russia Rings True". Australian Women's Weekly. p. 14 – via Trove.
• Heller, Anne C. (2009). Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51399-9.
• Lockwood, Ethel K. (May 1, 1936). "Let's Talk about Books". Santa Ana Register. Vol. 31, no. 131. p. 7 – via Newspapers.com.
• Mayhew, Robert, ed. (2012). Essays on Ayn Rand's We the Living (2nd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-4969-0.
• Merrill, Ronald E. (1991). The Ideas of Ayn Rand. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing. ISBN 0-8126-9157-1.
• Paxton, Michael (1998). Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life (The Companion Book). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0-87905-845-5.
• Rand, Ayn (1936). We the Living. New York: Macmillan.
• Rand, Ayn (1995). Berliner, Michael S (ed.). Letters of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton. ISBN 0-525-93946-6.
• Svanberg, Carl (September 18, 2014). "Introducing Ayn Rand's The Unconquered". Ayn Rand Institute. Archived from the original on May 3, 2019. Retrieved February 2, 2016.