Author: Gertrude Stein
Profile: Gertrude Stein was a writer, novelist, poet, playwright and art collector. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood, U.S. and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She grew up in Oakland, California. In 1903 she moved to Paris and for the remaining part of her life, made France her home. Gertrude hosted a salon in Paris were leading figures of modernism art and literature like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, etc would meet.
She was the pioneer of the Modernist literature Literary Movement. Alice Babette Toklas was her partner. A quasi-memoir of years spent by her in Paris were published by her in 1933 which turned out to be a literary bestseller which hurled her into the limelight of mainstream attention. “There is no there there’ and ‘A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ are the two quotes from her work which gained immense popularity. Her books included Q.E.D (1903) with reference to a lesbian romantic affair, Fernhurst about a love triangle and Tender Buttons, where she comments on sexuality of lesbians besides other books. During World War II her activities have been subject of commentary and analysis. She must have been able to sustain her lifestyle as an art collector in spite of being a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France through her contact with the powerful Bernard Fay, a Nazi collaborator and the Vichy government official. Towards the end of the war she expressed admiration for Vichy leader Marshal Petain, another Nazi collaborator.
Writing style: Gertrude Stein’s genre is classical.
Published Texts:
Published works
1909 – Three Lives
1913 – White Wines
1914 – Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms
1917 – An Exercise in Analysis
1920 – A Circular Play
1922 – Geography and Plays
1925 – The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress
1929 – Four Saints in Three Acts
1929 – Useful Knowledge
1929 – An Acquaintance with Description
1930 – Lucy Church Amiably
1931 – How to Write
1931 – They must. Be Wedded. To Their Wife
1932 – Operas and Plays
1933 – Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein with Two Shorter Stories
1933a – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
1933b – Blood on the Dining Room Floor
1934 – Portraits and Prayers
1935 – Lectures in America
1936 – The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind
1937 – Everybody’s Autobiography
1938 – Picasso
1938 – Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights
1939 – The World is Round
1940 – Paris France
1941 – Ida A Novel
1943 – Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters
1945a –Wars I Have Seen
1945b – A la recherce d’un jeune peintre
1946a – Reflections on the Atom Bomb
1946b – Brewsie and Willie
1947 – The Mother of Us All
1946d – Gertrude Stein on Picasso
1947 – Four in America
1947 – Mrs. Reynolds
1949 – Last Operas and Plays
1950- The Things as They Are
1953 – Patriarchal Poetry
1957 – Alphabets and Birthdays
1971 – Fernhurst
1986 –The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten
1996 – The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder
In the media
1996 Documentary – Paris Was a Woman
Awards and Acknowledgements:
Giannina Braschi, the Latin American literary classic Yo-Yo Boing! Novelist pays homage to Stein as an imaginary mentor in 1998.
Stein is portrayed by playwright / actor Jade Esteban Estrada in the solo musical ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World in 2005
Stein’s homonymous lecture was portrayed by theatre director / actor Luiz Paetow in 2006 in his solo Plays
Stephen Flaherty created a musical Loving Repeating based on the writings of Gertrude Stein
Many hostile references of Gertrude Stein are contained in the posthumously published Journals of Ayn Rand
The Swedish absurdist fiction film, Picassos Aventyr in 1978 depicts Stein and Toklas
Stein is added in the list of great notables and artists in the famous Broadway musical Rent in the song ‘La Vie Boheme’.
