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===Publication history=== Although she was a previously published novelist and had a [[Night of January 16th|successful Broadway play]], Rand had difficulty finding a publisher for ''The Fountainhead''. [[Macmillan Publishing]], which had published ''We the Living'', rejected the book after Rand insisted they provide more publicity for her new novel than they had done for the first one.<ref>{{harvnb|Branden|1986|p=155}}</ref> Rand's agent began submitting the book to other publishers; in 1938, [[Alfred A. Knopf|Knopf]] signed a contract to publish the book. When Rand was only a quarter done with the manuscript by October 1940, Knopf canceled her contract.<ref>{{harvnb|Burns|2009|p=52}}</ref> Several other publishers rejected the book. When Rand's agent began to criticize the novel, Rand fired the agent and decided to handle submissions herself.<ref>{{harvnb|Burns|2009|p=68}}</ref> Twelve publishers (including Macmillan and Knopf) rejected the book.<ref name="Branden170"/><ref name="Burns80">{{harvnb|Burns|2009|p=80}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Heller|2009|p=186}}</ref> While Rand was working as a script reader for [[Paramount Pictures]], her boss put her in touch with the Bobbs-Merrill Company. A recently hired editor, Archibald Ogden, liked the book, but two internal reviewers gave conflicting opinions. One said it was a great book that would never sell; the other said it was trash but would sell well. Ogden's boss, Bobbs-Merrill president D.L. Chambers, decided to reject the book. Ogden responded by [[Telegraphy|wiring]] to the head office, "If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you." His strong stand won Rand the contract on December 10, 1941. She also got a $1,000 [[Advance against royalties|advance]] so she could work full-time to complete the novel by January 1, 1943.<ref>Ralston, Richard E. "Publishing The Fountainhead". In {{harvnb|Mayhew|2006|p=68}}</ref><ref name="Heller 2009 144β145">{{harvnb|Heller|2009|pp=144β145}}</ref> Rand worked long hours through 1942 to complete the final two-thirds of her manuscript, which she delivered on December 31, 1942.<ref name="Heller 2009 144β145"/><ref>{{harvnb|Branden|1986|pp=172β174}}</ref> Rand's working title for the book was ''Second-Hand Lives'', but Ogden pointed out that this emphasized the story's villains. Rand offered ''The Mainspring'' as an alternative, but this title had been recently used for another book. She then used a [[thesaurus]] and found 'fountainhead' as a synonym.<ref name="Burns80"/> ''The Fountainhead'' was published on May 7, 1943, with 7,500 copies in the first printing. Initial sales were slow, but they began to rise in late 1943, driven primarily by word of mouth.{{snf|Gladstein|1999|p=12}}{{sfn|Heller|2009|pp=149, 156}} The novel began appearing on bestseller lists in 1944.<ref>{{harvnb|Heller|2009|p=166}}</ref> It reached number six on [[The New York Times Best Seller list|''The New York Times'' bestseller list]] in August 1945, over two years after its initial publication.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_ayn_rand_aynrand_timeline |title=Timeline of Ayn Rand's Life and Career |publisher=Ayn Rand Institute |access-date=April 23, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120930103100/http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_ayn_rand_aynrand_timeline |archive-date=September 30, 2012}}</ref> By 1956, the hardcover edition sold over 700,000 copies.<ref>Ralston, Richard E. "Publishing ''Atlas Shruggged''". In {{harvnb|Mayhew|2009|p=127}}</ref> The first paperback edition was published by the [[New American Library]] in 1952.{{sfn|Perinn|1990|p=22}} A 25th anniversary edition was issued by the New American Library in 1971, including a new introduction by Rand.{{sfn|Gladstein|2009|p=122}} The cover of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition featured a painting by Frank O'Connor titled ''Man Also Rises''.{{snf|Gladstein|1999|p=12}} In 1993, a 50th anniversary edition from Bobbs-Merrill added an afterword by Rand's heir, [[Leonard Peikoff]].{{sfn|Gladstein|2009|p=122}} The novel has been translated into more than 30 languages.{{efn|According to the Ayn Rand Institute, ''The Fountainhead'' has been translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Marathi, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://ari.aynrand.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ARI_FAQ_Foreign-Editions_20231219.pdf |title=Foreign Editions |publisher=Ayn Rand Institute |date=December 19, 2023 |access-date=March 7, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240715075404/https://ari.aynrand.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ARI_FAQ_Foreign-Editions_20231219.pdf |archive-date=July 15, 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref>}} Some passages were removed from the text prior to the publication, the most important of which concerns the relationship of Howard Roark with actress Vesta Dunning, a character that was cut from the finished novel. The deleted passages were first published posthumously in ''[[The Early Ayn Rand]]'' in 1984.{{sfn|Gladstein|1999|p=45}}
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