Gertrude Stein

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Textual Features Fleur Adcock
She relates how in reading for the anthology she made discoveries and underwent conversions—one result of which had to be the jettisoning of some early choices whose phantoms later, for her, haunted the volume...
Occupation Natalie Clifford Barney
Gertrude Stein was the featured writer at a gathering of the Académie des Femmes at NCB 's salon. The programme included an introduction by Mina Loy , Barney's French translations of The Making of Americans...
Textual Production Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB wrote a preface for Gertrude Stein 's As Fine as Melanctha, which was published later that year, eight years after Stein's death.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Occupation Natalie Clifford Barney
In a letter to Gertrude Stein written in December 1926, NCB explains: The other night . . . I realized how little the French femmes de lettres know of English and Americans and vice versa...
Friends, Associates Natalie Clifford Barney
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Natalie Clifford Barney
The first half, devoted to men, describes NCB 's encounters with Oscar Wilde , Anatole France , Remy de Gourmont , Marcel Proust , Gabriele D'Annunzio , Max Jacob , and others. The second part...
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...
Textual Features Natalie Clifford Barney
Less intimate than Souvenirs indiscrets, this volume includes sketches of Gertrude Stein , Jean Cocteau , Gide , D'Annunzio , and Rabindranath Tagore . One piece, written in response to Ramon Gomez de la Serna
Reception Sylvia Beach
Le Mercure de France published its homage to SB , with essays and poems by T. S. Eliot , Janet Flanner , André Gide , James Joyce , Gertrude Stein and others.
Mathews, Jackson, and Maurice Saillet. Sylvia Beach 1887-1962. Mercure de France.
cover and prelims
Occupation Sylvia Beach
This was the first American bookstore in Paris. It became a focal point of French and American literary activities. In the summer of 1921 the bookstore moved to 12 rue de l'Odéon.
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
60
For...
Friends, Associates Sylvia Beach
Among the first subscribers were Thérèse Bertrand (later Fontaine) , André Gide , Dorothy and Ezra Pound , and Gertrude Stein .
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
22, 26-7
With the loyal support of French literary figures such as Valery Larbaud
Publishing Sylvia Beach
Rather than being a historical opus about life in the heyday of Paris, this is an engaging mixture filled with sketchy and witty recollections. When William Bradley and Alfred Knopf approached SB more than...
Literary responses Christine Brooke-Rose
CBR held Guest Chairs at SUNY at Buffalo (1974), New York University (1976), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1979), and Brandeis University (1980).
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press.
228
Her own summary of her career, however, was that she tried...
Reception Rhoda Broughton
In a lamentable
Lowndes, Marie Belloc. Diaries and Letters of Marie Belloc Lowndes, 1911-1947. Editor Marques, Susan Lowndes, Chatto and Windus.
217
article on the death of Virginia Woolf , Hugh Walpole accused literary ladies of acting like priestesses engaged in throwing fragrant incense on their own altars. The first name he mentions...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
Though emotionally empty, the marriage was artistically productive. Most significantly, Bryher's introductions and family funds allowed McAlmon to establish his influential press, Contact Editions . Thus, Bryher's money and social connections enabled the publication of...

Timeline

1925: The Black US singer Josephine Baker, aged...

Building item

1925

The Black US singer Josephine Baker , aged nineteen, met with phenomenal success in Paris; she was seen as exemplifying the Jazz Age on one hand and a new racial consciousness on the other.

Texts

Stein, Gertrude, and Carl Van Vechten. A Novel of Thank You. Yale University Press, 1958.
Stein, Gertrude. “A Stein Song”. Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, edited by Carl Van Vechten, Random House, 1946, p. ix - xv.
Stein, Gertrude. Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded. Plain Edition, 1931.
Stein, Gertrude. Brewsie and Willie. Random House, 1946.
Stein, Gertrude. Composition as Explanation. Hogarth Press, 1926.
Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. Random House, 1937.
Stein, Gertrude, and Leon Katz. Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings. Liveright, 1971.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Gertrude Stein. “Foreword”. As Fine as Melanctha, Yale University Press, 1954, p. vii - xix.
Stein, Gertrude et al. Four Saints in Three Acts. Random House, 1934.
Stein, Gertrude, and Sherwood Anderson. Geography and Plays. Four Seas Press, 1922.
Stein, Gertrude. “How Many Acts Are There In It?”. Last Operas and Plays, edited by Carl Van Vechten, Rinehart, 1949, p. vii - xix.
Stein, Gertrude. Ida. Random House, 1941.
Stein, Gertrude. Last Operas and Plays. Editor Van Vechten, Carl, Rinehart, 1949.
Stein, Gertrude, and Elizabeth Sprigge. Look at Me Now and Here I Am: Writings and Lectures: 1909-1945. Editor Meyerowitz, Patricia, Penguin, 1971.
Stein, Gertrude. Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Plain Edition, 1933.
Stein, Gertrude. Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein. Something Else Press, 1972.
Stein, Gertrude, and Leon Solomons. “Normal Motor Automatism”. Harvard Psychological Review, Harvard University Press.
Stein, Gertrude. Paris France. Scribner, 1940.
Stein, Gertrude. Picasso. Floury, 1938.
Stein, Gertrude. Portraits and Prayers. Random House, 1934.
Stein, Gertrude. Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. Editor Van Vechten, Carl, Random House, 1946.
Stein, Gertrude, and Donald Sutherland. Stanzas in Meditation. Yale University Press, 1956.
Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Claire Marie, 1914.
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Harcourt, Brace, 1933.
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Vintage Books, 1990.