From 1961 to 1976, Rand was publisher and editor (sometimes co-editor) for three different periodicals:
The Objectivist Newsletter,
The Objectivist, and
The Ayn Rand Letter. In addition to editing, Rand wrote many articles for these publications.
The Objectivist Newsletter The first Objectivist periodical was
The Objectivist Newsletter, a four-page newsletter that began publishing in January 1962. The newsletter was co-published by
Ayn Rand and
Nathaniel Branden and grew out of the previous success of the
Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), which Branden had founded in 1958 (originally as Nathaniel Branden Lectures) to promote Objectivism. By late 1961, NBI had accumulated a mailing list of over 10,000 people, which was used to announce the newsletter. A number of different writers contributed articles to
The Objectivist Newsletter, including
Martin Anderson,
Barbara Branden,
Edith Efron,
Alan Greenspan,
Robert Hessen, and
Leonard Peikoff. However, the majority of the articles were written by either Ayn Rand or Nathaniel Branden. In 1965, Rand and Branden decided to change the format of the publication. In October 1965, they announced that
The Objectivist Newsletter would become
The Objectivist. This was purely a change of name and format, with business operations, including subscriptions, continuing unchanged.
The Objectivist In January 1966,
The Objectivist replaced
The Objectivist Newsletter, with Rand and Branden continuing as co-editors. The renamed publication used a sixteen-page magazine format in place of the previous newsletter format. The number of subscribers continued to climb, reaching 21,000 by the end of 1966. Contributors during this period included
economists Alan Greenspan and
George Reisman, historian
Robert Hessen,
neurophysiologist Robert Efron, novelists
Erika Holzer and
Kay Nolte Smith, and philosopher
Leonard Peikoff. In August 1968, Rand broke off her relationships with both Nathaniel and Barbara Branden. Nathaniel Branden resigned from
The Objectivist and signed over his half of the magazine to her. In the May 1968 issue, which appeared at this time because the magazine was then behind schedule, Rand issued a public statement denouncing the Brandens and disassociating herself from them. From this point forward, Rand acted as the sole editor for the magazine, bringing in Peikoff as an associate editor. In 1971, Rand decided on another format change, going back to a newsletter style publication, in the hope that this would allow her to reach a larger audience. The final issue of
The Objectivist was published in September 1971.
The Ayn Rand Letter In October 1971, Rand began publishing
The Ayn Rand Letter. This new publication was produced in the style of a typewritten letter and was published
fortnightly. Rand's initial hopes for reaching a wider audience with the newsletter format were not fulfilled. The
Letter actually lost subscribers compared to
The Objectivist, largely because of the
Letter's higher subscription price. The newsletter was usually four or six pages long with a single major article per issue, plus occasional announcements and the continuing "Objectivist Calendar" entries. Rand wrote most of the articles herself, in addition to acting as editor and publisher.
Leonard Peikoff served as a contributing editor and wrote the articles for six of the newsletter's eighty-one issues. As Hessen described it, "This incident, stretching across eight months, took a heavy toll on her writing and publication schedule, which allocated no time for unexpected interruptions." Several issues of the
Letter published during this period bore a postscript: "This
Letter was written later than the date that appears on its heading." Rand attempted to bring the
Letter back on schedule, but further delays occurred when she was diagnosed with
lung cancer. Each issue continued to bear the date when it should have appeared on the original fortnightly schedule, with the "written later" postscript. Rand was unable to sustain this schedule either, and announced at the end of 1975 that the newsletter would cease publication. The final issue appeared in February 1976. It was the last periodical that Rand edited, although she did serve as an adviser to
The Objectivist Forum when that magazine began in 1980.
Article reprints The articles from Rand's three periodicals did not appear only in their respective pages. They were frequently reprinted as pamphlets. Initially these were sold by the NBI Book Service, an affiliate of the
Nathaniel Branden Institute. When NBI and its affiliates were closed in 1968, a new Objectivist Book Service began selling the reprints. The Objectivist Book Service later sold reprints from
The Ayn Rand Letter until shortly after that publication was discontinued. In addition to pamphlets, many articles from these periodicals also appeared in books. Articles from
The Objectivist Newsletter by Rand and Nathaniel Branden made up most of the content for
The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand's next book,
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, included articles from her and Branden, plus Greenspan and Hessen. Reprints of Rand's articles also appeared in
The Romantic Manifesto,
The New Left (later revised as
Return of the Primitive),
Philosophy: Who Needs It, and
The Voice of Reason. The content of Rand's
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology was serialized in
The Objectivist, and the published book also includes an article by Leonard Peikoff reprinted from that same magazine. Peikoff's articles for
The Ayn Rand Letter were material later incorporated into his book
The Ominous Parallels. All three of the periodicals edited by Rand were later published in hardcover collections by Palo Alto Book Service. In 2001, all the articles by Rand and Peikoff were incorporated into the
Objectivism Research CD-ROM, a searchable e-book of their writings (which was subsequently discontinued). ==Other Objectivist periodicals==