From the perspective of the mid-Twentieth Century, when the schools of "Naturalism," then "Realism," had swept "serious" literature, Ayn Rand could look back on Romanticism and discern-as even Hugo did not in full-what truly constituted its spirit and power. What was essential and what accidental, what consistent with its vital spirit and what contradictory to it.This enabled her, as she progressed from novel to novel-and the growth that occurred...