Autograph Manuscript of her article "Why I Like Stamp Collecting" de Rand, Ayn - 1971

1971. 16-1/2 pp. blue ink on pale blue paper, paginated 1-14, 16 (complete, erroneously skipping 15) with additional two half pages of inserts, extensive corrections and deletions throughout, many in red ink, with "by Ayn Rand" added in another hand. 4to (11 x 8-1/2 in.). A few minor spots of soiling. Laid into a quarter red morocco dropbox with a red leather label on upper cover. "A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer" A heavily reworked manuscript draft of Rand's article on stamp collecting, "Why I Like Stamp Collecting," published, with some changes, in 1971 in Jacques Minkus' Stamp Journal (vol. IV, no. 2). Rand recounts how a meeting later in life with a young stamp collector revived her interest in a hobby she had begun when ten years old but had to give up when she fled the Russian Revolution. Rand gives her many reasons for stamp collecting: an hour spent working on her collection is a remedy for mental fatigue; it is a hobby for "busy, purposeful, ambitious people"; there is a pleasant fraternity among stamp collectors; collecting can have the thrill of the treasure hunt; stamp collecting enlarges one's perception of the world and is a testament to the technical brilliance of man ("for a few pennies, you can send a letter to any place on earth, to the farthest, most desolate corner where human beings live"); and finally, she enjoys the aesthetics of stamps ("the stamps of Japan are consistently the best"). With a copy of the published article.