Anthem is one of Ayn Rand's earlier works, and presages the fears of collectivism that characterize Objectivism and her later work, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The novel is set in the future and has a universal, timeless feel in its characterization of an ideal character's struggle against a monolithic state. Over the course of this relatively short novella, Rand sets the individual against the collective and concludes that the rational celebration of self is the only avenue through which technological and societal progress can occur without the suppression of free will.

Rand wrote Anthem in 1937, as a break in her composition of The Fountainhead, and she published it in 1938, with a revised and more commonly read version appearing in 1946. As in the case of many contemporary writers of dystopian fiction, such as George Orwell with Animal Farm, Rand initially wrote her novel as a warning against Soviet Communism before the end of World War II, but did not receive a popular audience until the Russians were no longer wartime allies of Western Europe and the United States. At the time, some contemporary philosophers still supported the Soviet Union, and even those who saw problems with the regime such as George Orwell believed that less extreme versions such as socialism might still have legitimate value. Rand, on the other hand, rejected all forms of collectivism as inherently flawed, a conclusion that undoubtedly had roots in her experiences in early twentieth-century Russia.