First Printing January 1, 1971 Signet Q4484, 95 cents cover price. In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned book, Ayn Rand throws a new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again Miss Rand eloquently demonstrates her refusal to let popular catchwords and conventional ideas stand between her and the truth as she has discovered it. Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto is a tour de force that explains clearly and convincingly the nature of art, its purpose, and why Romanticism is the highest, most noble form of art. "Art is a selective re-creation of reality based on the artist's metaphysical value judgments" says Miss Rand, and then proceeds to prove it. In her ethics Ayn Rand extolled the virtue of selfishness—and in her theory of art she was no less radical. Piercing the fog of mysticism and sentimentality that engulfs art, the essays in The Romantic Manifesto explain why, since time immemorial, man has created and consumed works of art. Ayn Rand argues that objective standards in art are possible because art is not a subjective luxury, but rather a critical need of human life—not a material need, but a need of man’s rational mind, the faculty on which his material survival depends. Ayn Rand explains the indispensable function of art in man’s life (ch. 1), the objective source of man’s deeply personal, emotional response to art (ch. 2), and how an artist’s fundamental, often unstated view of man and of the world shapes his creations (ch. 3). Turning to her own field of artistic creation, Rand elaborates (ch. 5) on her distinctive theory of literature and identifies principles by which to judge an artwork objectively. “What is Romanticism?” (ch. 6) sheds new light on the nature and philosophy of the school of literature under which Rand classified her own work. Later essays explain how contemporary art reveals the debased intellectual state of our culture (ch. 7, 8 and 9). In the final essay Rand articulates the goal of her own fiction writing as “the projection of an ideal man, as an end in itself”—and explains that she originated her philosophy as a means to this end. Table of Contents Introduction The Psycho-Epistemology of Art Philosophy and Sense of Life Art and Sense of Life Art and Cognition Basic Principles of Literature What Is Romanticism? The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age Bootleg Romanticism Art and Moral Treason Introduction to Ninety-Three The Goal of My Writing The Simplest Thing in the World