Welcome to Hard Times.

New York: The New American Library,, 1961. Presented to Ayn Rand First paperback edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the title page, "to Ayn Rand with Best Wishes - E. L. Doctorow October 14, 1963". Before becoming a full-time writer, Doctorow spent nearly a decade in the publishing world, beginning at Signet / New American Library in 1960. Here he would work with a number of important authors, including Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand. This presentation copy is therefore entirely appropriate for it comprises the first Signet / New American Library paperback edition. The edition was preceded by a hardback edition in the previous year, published by Simon and Schuster. Doctorow would oversee the paperback publication of many of Rand's works, including Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, For the New Intellectual, The Virtue of Selfishness, and We the Living. This copy is therefore more than simply a presentation copy from the author. It is also a copy from the library of Ayn Rand, inscribed to her by her editor. Welcome to Hard Times was Doctorow's debut novel, an "anti-western" set in Dakota Territory, concerning a small town's moral struggle to resist the evil ravages of outsider, "The Bad Man From Bodie". The subject may have interested Rand, who frequently wrote about the baneful influence of violence in civil society: "One does not and cannot 'negotiate' with brutality, nor give it the benefit of the doubt" ("Brief Comments" in The Objectivist, March 1969). The novel was the basis for Burt Kennedy's 1967 American Western film starring Henry Fonda, Janice Rule, Warren Oates and Aldo Ray. Octavo. Original illustrated wrappers, lettering to spine in black and purple, edges red. Slight lean to spine and very slightly sunned, short crease to top corner of front cover, extremities very slightly rubbed, consistent light browning; a near-fine copy.