?Why I Like Stamp Collecting?
Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982)
Autograph manuscript, 1971

Minkus Stamp Journal Vol. IV, No. 2
New York : Jacques Minkus, 1971

Manuscripts Collection, Brown University Library Special Collections

The novelist Ayn Rand was an avid stamp collector, finding the activity to be ?a miraculous brain-restorer.? For Rand, stamp collecting was ?a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people–because, in patterns, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.? Brown University Library purchased this manuscript and publication in 2015 to shed light on  personal collecting philosophies and link the stamp collections to other university holdings.

View the manuscript in the BDR.    |    View the journal article in the BDR