Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Gertrude Stein
-
Standard Name: Stein, Gertrude
Birth Name: Gertrude Stein
Nickname: Altrude
Nickname: Sybil of Montparnasse
Gertrude Stein
concerned herself with problems of identity, knowledge, consciousness, and language. In a period of modernist experiment, she became famous as a radically innovative avant-gardist. Her experimental imagination played around with the generic requirements of many forms—short stories, detective stories, novellas, literary portraits, poems, autobiographies, critical essays, operas, plays, and war reminiscences. This often non-referential work is opaque and resistant to interpretation. An expatriate for virtually all of her writing career and of the first half of the twentieth century, living largely in Paris (though in French villages during the Second World War), she marked her writing as deeply American. In the years between the wars she hosted her legendary salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, where, after 1910, she lived with her life partner, Alice B. Toklas
. With her brother Leo
, Stein was an early collector and promoter of modern, especially cubist, painting.
The street in which LC
and Ernst lived was also occupied by such authors as Gertrude Stein
and Natalie Barney
at various times in the early twentieth century.
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Carson
AC
's starting-point is the poem about Geryon by the Greek lyric poet Stesichoros
or Stesichorus, whose surviving writings are so gnomic and fragmentary that every statement about them remains hesitant and uncertain. Stesichoros is...
Intertextuality and Influence
Natalie Clifford Barney
At the beginning of the preface, NCB
explains that she has not yet received the manuscript, so she will talk instead about my personal experience and points of contact and discord with this author, whose...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edith Sitwell
ES
loved Christina Rossetti
from her childhood, and later thoroughly admired Gertrude Stein
. As a young woman, however, she believed: Women's poetry, with the exception of Sappho
. . . and Goblin MarketChristina Rossetti
and...
Friends, Associates
Laura Riding
Graves and Riding were touchy as friends, between their sense of literary mission (they saw Graves's biography of T. E. Lawrence
as a somewhat demeaning potboiler, not part of his real work at all) and...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
By the time of the move to Tavistock Square, VW
began to socialize more than she had in years. She circulated with Bloomsbury familiars and (re)acquainted herself with Rebecca West
, Rose Macaulay
,...
Friends, Associates
Hope Mirrlees
While living in Paris, Mirrlees and Harrison entertained visitors who included HM
's mother
(widowed in 1924), and Virginia
and Leonard Woolf
.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press.
ML
first met Leo
and Gertrude Stein
and Alice Toklas
at Mabel Dodge
's Florence salon. Mina's and Gertrude's friendship continued for many years, and Mina wrote and spoke about Stein's writing in the 1920s...
Friends, Associates
Mina Loy
ML
was now at the centre of the Parisian expatriate literary community, and she renewed her friendships with Gertrude Stein
and Djuna Barnes
.
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Despite their common pursuits, NCB
and Gertrude Stein
did not become acquainted until 1926, when Barney cultivated Stein's friendship. The women gradually began to exchange visits and to share guests at their salons. By 1939...
Friends, Associates
Edith Sitwell
By 1919 ES
was also friendly with Arnold Bennett
and his wife Marguerite
. Wyndham Lewis
became a great friend, did many drawings of her, and demonstrated a sexual interest in her as well, which...
Friends, Associates
Lady Ottoline Morrell
Her tour of the city with Chadbourne included the studios of Matisse
and Picasso
(in Montmartre), and Gertrude
's and Leo Stein
's collection of contemporary paintings.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux.
88
Friends, Associates
Edith Sitwell
In Paris ES
frequented Sylvia Beach
's bookshop. She saw more than before of Gertrude Stein
, whom she liked for her personal qualities but called the last writer whom any other writer in the...
Friends, Associates
Nina Hamnett
In Paris NH
quickly re-acquainted herself with old friends and met new ones, re-establishing her presence at the popular cafés. She re-connected with Marie Wassilieff
, Zadkine
, Brancusi
, Aleister Crowley
, and others...
Friends, Associates
H. D.
In the 1920s, while HD and Bryher
were living rootlessly, sometimes in London, sometimes in Europe, HD's list of acquaintances grew to include Gertrude Stein
, Alice B. Toklas
, Ernest Hemingway
, James Joyce
