Stein, Gertrude, 1874–1946, American author and patron of the arts, b. Allegheny (now part of Pittsburgh), Pa. A celebrated personality, she encouraged, aided, and influenced—through her patronage as well as through her writing—many literary and artistic figures. After attending (1893–97) Radcliffe, where she was a student of William James James, William, 1842–1910, American philosopher, b. New York City, M.D. Harvard, 1869; son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James and brother of the novelist Henry James .
..... Click the link for more information. , she began premedical work at Johns Hopkins. In 1902, relinquishing her studies, she went abroad and from 1903 until her death lived chiefly in Paris. For many years her secretary and lover was Alice B. Toklas. In Paris, Stein became interested in modern art movements; she encouraged and purchased the work of many new painters, including Picasso Picasso, Pablo (Pablo Ruiz y Picasso) (pä`blō pēkä`sō; r
..... Click the link for more information. and Matisse Matisse, Henri (äNrē` mätēs`), 1869–1954, French painter, sculptor, and lithographer.
..... Click the link for more information. . During the 1920s, she was the leader of a cultural salon that included such writers as Hemingway Hemingway, Ernest, 1899–1961, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Oak Park, Ill. one of the great American writers of the 20th cent.

Life

The son of a country doctor, Hemingway worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star
..... Click the link for more information. , Sherwood Anderson Anderson, Sherwood, 1876–1941, American novelist and short-story writer, b. Camden, Ohio. After serving briefly in the Spanish-American War, he became a successful advertising man and later a manager of a paint factory in Elyria, Ohio.
..... Click the link for more information. , and F. Scott Fitzgerald Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, 1900–1947, b. Montgomery, Ala., was also a writer. She was intermittently confined to sanatoriums after 1930 for schizophrenia, but still managed to publish short stories and a novel, Save Me the Waltz (1932, repr. 1974).
..... Click the link for more information. , all of whose works she influenced. It was she who first coined the phrase "lost generation" for those post–World War I expatriates. During World War II she remained in France, and after the war her Paris home became a meeting place for American soldiers.

Stein's own innovative writing emphasizes the sounds and rhythms rather than the sense of words. By departing from conventional meaning, grammar, and syntax, she attempted to capture "moments of consciousness," independent of time and memory. Her first published work was Three Lives (completed 1905, pub. 1909), short stories in which she explored the mental processes of three women, but her most characteristic and probably most difficult narrative is the lengthy, dark, dense, and repetitive The Making of Americans (completed 1911, pub. 1925). The famous Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), a linear narrative written in relatively ordinary language, is the story of her own life presented as that of her companion. Stein's critical essays were published as Composition as Explanation (1926), How to Write (1931), Narration (1935), and Lectures in America (1935). Her many other works include the volume of poetry Tender Buttons (1914), a series of "cubist" verbal portraits; two librettos for the operas of Virgil Thomson, Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947); Wars I Have Seen (1945), some personal observations; and Brewsie and Willie (1946), about American soldiers in France.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. M. Brinnin (1959, repr. 1987) and J. Hobhouse (1975); D. Souhami, Gertrude and Alice (1992); B. Kellner, ed., A Gertrude Stein Companion (1988); A. B. Toklas, What Is Remembered (1963, repr. 1985); J. R. Mellow, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company (1974, repr. 1991); L. Simon, ed., Gertrude Stein Remembered (1994); B. Wineapple, Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein (1996); studies by R. Dubnick (1984), J. L. Walker (1984), and U. E. Dydo (2003); bibliography by R. A. Wilson and A. Uphill (1999).

Stein, Gertrude

(born Feb. 3, 1874, Allegheny City, Pa., U.S.—died July 27, 1946, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) U.S. avant-garde writer. Born to a wealthy family, Stein studied at Radcliffe College before moving to Paris, where from 1909 she lived with her companion Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967). Their home was a salon for leading artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. An early supporter of Cubism, she tried to parallel its theories in her work, including the poetry volume Tender Buttons (1914). Her prose was characterized by a unique style employing repetition, fragmentation, and use of the continuous present, especially in the immense novel The Making of Americans (written 1906–11, published 1928). Her only book to reach a wide public was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), actually Stein's own autobiography. Her other works include Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947), opera librettos scored by Virgil Thomson.

Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946) writer, art patron; born in Allegheny, Pa. Daughter of a wealthy merchant, she lived in Europe with her family (1874–79). Upon their return, the family settled in Oakland, Calif. She attended Radcliffe College (B.A. 1898), where she studied psychology under William James (and would remain greatly influenced by his ideas) and at Johns Hopkins Medical School (1897–1901). She followed her brother, Leo Stein, first to London and then Paris (1903), where they began collecting post-impressionist paintings, thereby helping several leading artists such as Matisse and Picasso. She and Leo established a famous literary and artistic salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Leo moved to Florence, Italy, in 1912, taking many of the paintings, but from 1909 Gertrude had as her assistant Alice B. Toklas, who would remain as Gertrude's lifelong companion. She had been writing for several years and began to publish her innovative works: Three Lives (1909), The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress (written 1906–11; published 1925), and Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms (1914). Intended to employ the techniques of abstraction and cubism in prose, much of her work was virtually unintelligible to even educated readers. During World War I she bought her own Ford van and she and Toklas served as ambulance drivers for the French. After the war, she maintained her salon (although after 1928 she spent much of the year in the village of Bilignin, and in 1937 she moved to a more stylish location in Paris) and served as both hostess and inspiration to such American expatriates as Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. (She is credited with coining the term, "the lost generation.") She lectured in England in 1926 and in 1933 published her only commercial success, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written by Stein from Toklas's point of view. She made a successful lecture tour of the U.S.A. in 1934 but returned to France where she spent World War II; with the liberation of Paris in 1944, she was visited by many Americans. In addition to her other novels and memoirs, she wrote librettos to two operas by Virgil Thomson, Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947). Although critical opinion is divided on her various writings, the imprint of her strong, witty personality survives as does her influence on contemporary literature.