Lot 368

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Original Manuscript Page With Corrections, 80 Words in Her Hand!

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Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Original Manuscript Page With Corrections, 80 Words in Her Hand!

Estimate: $40,000 - $50,000

Current Bid: $19,000

(4 Bids)

June 17, 2026 10:00 AM EDT
Live Auction
Wilton, CT, US

Description:

Ayn Rand
n.p., March 28, 1952
Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" Original Manuscript Page With Corrections, 80 Words in Her Hand!
AM

An autograph manuscript, marked as page "409" of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged", in which Dagny watches John Galt's plane take off. 1p, 8.5" x 11", n.p., March 28, 1952. Featuring 79 words in her hand, with extensive revisions and deletions throughout. Exhibits gentle age toning and handling creases along top margin. Small stain in the upper right corner. Negligible paper loss in the bottom right. Else, near fine. Housed within a custom blue cloth presentation case, measuring 10" x 12.25" x 1.75" overall. A similar page (#407) but arguably lesser in terms of revision and creative process, sold in Bonhams for $52,500 in 2017!

In full:

"She stood and watched the long, silver spread of its wings grow smaller in the sky, driving away in its wake the sound of the motor. She watched it like a star in the process of extinction, while it shrank from cross to dot to a burning spark which she was no longer certain of seeing. When she saw that the spread of the sky was strewn with such sparks all over she knew that the plane was gone."

The text of this manuscript is from Part III, Chapter II, "The Utopia of Greed." In this chapter, the heroine, Dagny Taggart, finds herself in John Galt's utopian paradise- Galt's Gulch- where she learns that the disappearances of men like banker Midas Mulligan and oilman Ellis Wyatt have not been random acts of a "destroyer," but are instead part of an organized response to the spread of collectivism. Page 409 is that last paragraph of the chapter, describing the departure of Galt's plane.

In 1991, a Library of Congress Brook of the Month Club survey found "Atlas Shrugged" to be the second most influential book in people's lives next to the Bible. Ayn Rand wrote her masterpiece in a first draft, and then a final manuscript. Her assistant, Barbara Brandon, saved this page of the very heavily corrected and reworked original manuscript- most of the other pages being discarded after transcription. The final manuscript in its entirety is in the Library of Congress. Writing about this surviving page, saved at the time as a memento, Brandon, later the author of "The Passion of Ayn Rand," wrote: "My prized possession is the manuscript of 'Atlas Shrugged', written in Ayn's strong, angular hand- a gift I had treasured for forty years. Touching it sweeps me back to the years of reading the manuscript as Ayn was writing it- the excitement of being carried into a saner universe than the one I knew- the job of discovering the answers to so many questions that had seemed to have no answer- the ecstatic sense of encountering, on each page, a mind of such power and range that I knew it would never find its equal again. I think of the sense, through those years, that her fictional heroes, John Galt and Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon and Francisco d'Anconia, were becoming intimate and well-loved friends, almost as real as my other friends, almost as real as Ayn Rand…."

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: Case: 10" x 12.25" x 1.75"
  • Medium: AM

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $99 $10
$100 $299 $20
$300 $499 $25
$500 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $2,999 $200
$3,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 + $5,000