G. B. Stern

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GBS , who was writing through a large stretch of the twentieth century, published over forty novels of a middle-brow character, as well as light plays, short stories, informal criticism, and haphazard autobiographical memoirs. Her high reputation has somewhat declined, but her family saga about the cosmopolitan Jewish Rakonitz family is still remembered.
  • BirthName: Gladys Bertha Stern
    At school, she later remembered, she was called Gladys Stern.
    Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
    34

  • Nicknames: Peter
    This was the name used by her friends. She gave it to a heroine of an early book, whose christened name is Pepita.
    Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press, 2000.
    189n26
    Stern, G. B. A Name to Conjure With. Collins, 1953.
    30
    ; Tynx
    This was affectionately invented by H. G. Wells , and was intended to suggest both a tigress and a sphinx, though its owner observed that it did neither.
    Stern, G. B. A Name to Conjure With. Collins, 1953.
    30-1

  • Self-constructed: Bronwyn
    Having never liked the name Bertha, which she thought leaves an effect of mud,GBS , on impulse, and in a moment of Celtic longings, changed it to Bronwyn for her entry in Who's Who. This gave it permanence.
    Stern, G. B. A Name to Conjure With. Collins, 1953.
    31
  • Pseudonym: G. B. S.
    She calls these initials firmly mine in spite of competition!—thinking of George Bernard Shaw .
    Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
    34

  • Indexed: G. B. Stern
Colour, head-and-shoulders drawing of G. B. Stern, wearing a white cap and a black scarf. The edges of her image fade into the white background. The image was likely used on a pre-war cigarette card.

Milestones

17 June 1890

GBS was born (under Gemini, as she says) at 99 St Mark's Road in North Kensington, London: the second, by some years, of two sisters.
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall, 1936.
30
Vasudevan, Aruna, editor. Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. 3rd ed., St James Press, 1994.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1924

GBS published Tents of Israel, A Chronicle, the first of three novels making up her best-known work, a saga of the life of a Jewish family; this opening volume has also been reprinted as The Matriarch, A Chronicle.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

8 May 1929

The Matriarch, A Play in a Prologue and Three Acts, a stage adaptation of GBS 's novel Tents of Israel (1924), opened at the Royalty Theatre in London.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
197

1964

GBS published her final novel, Promise Not to Tell.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

18 September 1973

GBS died in hospital at Wallingford in Berkshire of bronchial pneumonia following a stroke; she was in her eighties.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Background

17 June 1890

GBS was born (under Gemini, as she says) at 99 St Mark's Road in North Kensington, London: the second, by some years, of two sisters.
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall, 1936.
30
Vasudevan, Aruna, editor. Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. 3rd ed., St James Press, 1994.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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