Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania to Jewish-Bavarian parents. She was educated briefly in Europe and then studied at Radcliffe beginning in 1893. Stein studied psychology under William James and his influence runs through her work. After her studies, Stein moved to Paris. She lived there with her brother, Leo, from 1903, and with Alice B. Toklas, her life companion, from 1914. They established a salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus where Toklas was an accomplished cook. The salon attracted intellectuals and artists with its atmosphere of creative energy, and groups would discuss new ideas in art and politics.

Stein's first novel, "Q.E.D." (1903) remained unpublished until after her death because of its intimate nature, dealing with lesbian themes. Stein made her debut as a writer with "Three Lives," in 1909. The book was based on a reworking of a late Flaubert text called, "Trois Contes." She was interested in connecting theories of Cubism to literature and many painters influenced her work: Cezanne's and Matisse's painting inspired the composition of her early "Three Lives," while Picasso's cubism informs her astonishing prose-poem "Tender Buttons" (1914). In her book about Picasso (1938) Stein recalled that in 1909 the artist showed her some photographs of a Spanish village to demonstrate how Cubist in reality they appeared.

Her modernist literary style was launched with "The Making of Americas," a famil history and history of the whole of humanity, written between 1906 and 1908. Stein tried to translate in it Cubist paintings into a prose form and present an object or an experience from every angle simultaneously. The effect was reinforced by minimal use of punctuation. Stein was also fascinated by automatic writing.

In 1914, Stein published her collection of poetry called "Tender Buttons." It presented a series of still lives such as "A Chair," "A Box," "A Room," "The End of Summer."

Tolkas and Stein were visiting England when England declared war on Germany. After a brief trip to Majorca in 1915, they returned to Paris. In 1934 Stein went to New York. Her opera "Four Saints in Three Acts had become a huge success with an all-black cast. Stein toured America and returned to France the next year. Even though Tolkas and Stein were Jews, they remained in France during WWII, living under protection of Petain in various houses. In December 1944, they returned to Paris. "Wars I Have Seen," her war memoirs, appeared in 1945.

Stein's best-known work is "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," but is actually her own autobiography. Although Stein's works were highly modernistic and experimental, she had a strong influence on popular writer such as Ernest Hemingway, who combined her patterns of repetitive sounds with vernacular speech.

Stein suffered from cancer and died on July 27, 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Toklas lived on until 1967. Her memoirs, "What is Remembered," appeared in 1963.