Gertrude Stein Biography Quotes 81 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Gertrude Stein was born in 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and spent parts of her childhood in Europe before her family settled in Oakland, California. The upheaval of early moves and the later disappearance of her childhood landmarks informed a memory-inflected sensibility that would resurface in her writing and famous remark about Oakland. She studied at the Harvard Annex (later Radcliffe College), where she worked with the psychologist and philosopher William James. Under his influence she explored questions of consciousness, habit, and attention, and published early experimental work in psychology. In 1897 she entered Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine but left without taking a degree, increasingly drawn to literature and to a life outside conventional professional paths.

Paris and the Salon at 27 rue de Fleurus
In 1903 Stein moved to Paris with her brother, the art critic and collector Leo Stein. Their apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus soon became a gathering place for artists and writers at the forefront of modernism. Early on, they acquired bold works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and others at a time when such paintings were still fiercely debated. Picasso painted her portrait in 1906, a work that signaled mutual recognition between painter and writer of a shared ambition to reinvent form. Visitors to the Saturday evenings included Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and, among literary figures, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The salon offered a rare space where visual experimentation and literary innovation intertwined, and Stein was at the center of those conversations.

Literary Innovation and Major Works
Stein's early fiction, notably Three Lives (1909), announced her method: repetition, variation, and an insistence on the presentness of language over traditional narrative plot. The long project The Making of Americans, drafted over many years and published in 1925, undertook an exhaustive analysis of character and family across generations, using rhythmic reiteration rather than conventional storytelling to build meaning. Tender Buttons (1914) pushed further, presenting short prose pieces about objects, food, and rooms that refract perception the way cubist paintings refract sight. She developed a practice of verbal portraiture, writing about friends and artists in a way that concentrated on movement, tempo, and verbal texture rather than physical description.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), written in Stein's voice but presented as if by her partner Alice B. Toklas, brought her wide public attention. Its wit, candor about the Paris years, and portraits of figures such as Picasso, Matisse, and Hemingway turned Stein from an avant-garde figure into a literary celebrity. The book's success led to a lecture tour in the United States, during which she spoke about composition, grammar, and modern writing; those talks were collected in Lectures in America (1935). She continued to experiment in prose, poetry, and drama, producing works such as Ida, Paris France, and Stanzas in Meditation.

Collaboration with Composers and the Stage
Stein's language appealed to composers seeking new relationships between words and music. With Virgil Thomson she created the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, which premiered in 1934 and gained attention for its playful libretto and innovative staging. They later collaborated on The Mother of Us All, an opera about Susan B. Anthony that was completed near the end of Stein's life and premiered after her death. These collaborations extended Stein's reach beyond the page and influenced later experiments in minimalist and postmodern theater.

War Years and Public Life
During World War I, Stein and Toklas volunteered in France, using a car to deliver supplies to hospitals and rural communities. In the interwar years, Stein remained a central figure in expatriate Paris, though her circle shifted after her brother Leo departed and the art collection was divided. The 1930s brought both acclaim and debate, as younger writers such as Ernest Hemingway acknowledged her influence even while charting their own courses.

Stein and Toklas lived in France during World War II, spending much of the occupation away from Paris. As a Jewish American who remained in France, Stein's wartime stance and associations have been examined closely by later scholars. Friends and acquaintances, including the academic Bernard Fay, figured in her ability to remain in relative safety, a circumstance that has prompted continuing controversy and discussion. Her wartime reflections appeared in books such as Wars I Have Seen.

Alice B. Toklas and Personal Life
Alice B. Toklas, whom Stein met in Paris in 1907, became her partner in life and work. Toklas managed day-to-day arrangements, typed manuscripts, tended to correspondence, and hosted visitors, while Stein composed for hours each day. Their household was a collaborative enterprise, with Toklas's culinary skill and social tact offsetting Stein's intense focus on writing. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas both celebrated and gently teased this partnership, and it introduced readers to the salon's array of figures, from Matisse and Picasso to Ezra Pound and Sherwood Anderson.

Return to the United States and Later Years
The 1934, 1935 lecture tour in the United States gave Stein a new audience. She visited universities, spoke on radio programs, and met with editors and patrons. The enthusiasm of those months contrasted with the political anxieties that soon followed in Europe. In the early 1940s she continued to write, publishing Paris France and other reflections on culture and daily life under strain. After the liberation, she resumed friendships with artists and writers who had survived the war and returned to Parisian life with Toklas.

Death and Legacy
Stein died in 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, after surgery, and was buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her legacy spans literature, art, and cultural history. In prose and poetry, she reframed language as material, emphasizing pattern, sound, and the logic of repetition. In criticism and conversation, she helped shape the reputations of painters such as Picasso and Matisse and encouraged younger writers who came through her salon. Her formulations about composition, including remarks later collected in essays like Composition as Explanation and Poetry and Grammar, influenced generations of poets and experimental prose writers.

Stein's name remains linked to the transatlantic modernist network that included Leo Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Virgil Thomson. Her work invites readers to experience language as an event, and her Paris home symbolizes an era when art and literature reinvented their means. The debates that surround aspects of her life, from aesthetic choices to political situations, attest to the intensity of her commitments and the continuing relevance of her contribution to twentieth-century culture.

Our collection contains 81 quotes who is written by Gertrude, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Truth - Music - Writing.

Other people realated to Gertrude: George Santayana (Philosopher), Kathy Bates (Actress), Edmund Wilson (Critic), Thornton Wilder (Writer), Djuna Barnes (Novelist)

• How did Gertrude Stein die: Stomach cancer
• Gertrude Stein writing style: Experimental, repetitive, nontraditional narrative and syntax
• What was Gertrude Stein most famous for: Innovative modernist literature and famous salons in Paris
• Gertrude Stein Truism: 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose'
• Gertrude Stein works: 'Three Lives', 'Tender Buttons', 'The Making of Americans', 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'
• Gertrude Stein poems: 'A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass', 'Sacred Emily', 'Stanzas in Meditation'
• Gertrude Stein famous works: 'Three Lives', 'Tender Buttons', 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'
• How old was Gertrude Stein? She became 72 years old

• 1937 Everybody's Autobiography (Autobiography)
• 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Autobiography)
• 1914 Tender Buttons (Poetry)
• 1909 Three Lives: Stories of the Good Anna, Melanctha, and the Gentle Lena (Novel)

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