 Cover of the British first edition | |
| Author | Diana Souhami |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Literary criticism |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-1848851481 |
Gertrude and Alice is a 1991 book about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas by English biographer Diana Souhami.
Gertrude & Alice opens with a brief portrait of the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. [1] Souhami devotes two chapters, respectively, to the early years of Gertrude Stein [2] and the early years of Alice B. Toklas. [3] The book then moves to a chapter on Stein's "first love", for a fellow student named May Bookstaver, a Bryn Mawr College graduate whom Stein met while studying in the medical school at Johns Hopkins University. [4] The book covers Stein's move to Paris with her brother Leo, where they established a household on the Rue de Fleurus. [5] A chapter is devoted to the meeting of Stein and Toklas, [6] another to the establishment of a partnership between them, [7] and a third to their "marriage." [8] Other chapters cover their experience of World War I, [9] the famous men and women they associated with, [10] their country house in Bilignin, France, [11] The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , [12] Stein and Toklas's tour of America, [13] their experiences of World War II, [14] their experiences after the war ended, [15] and Toklas's life after Stein's death. [16]
The book contains 43 black-and-white illustrations.
Souhami's book received mixed reviews in the press. Among the more laudatory reviews, Nolan Miller and Gerda Oldham wrote in The Antioch Review, "[a]lthough Souhami writes with no personal knowledge of the protagonists, she has managed to compose (from letters, memoirs, and the published works of both) an intimate portrait of two forceful and distinctive women who met in Paris in 1907 and lived together until Gertrude Stein died in 1946.... Altogether, this delightful compilation makes a coherent story." [17]
An unsigned review in The Woman's Art Journal was similarly positive: "Diana Souhami has mined both archival and published material on the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.... Souhami writes entertainingly about their patronage of young, avant-garde artists, the development of their art collection, and their legendary salons, which were central to Paris's cultural life for almost 40 years." [18]
Kirkus Reviews wrote that "the odd, legendary, and passionate collaboration between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas is eyed with detailed objectivity by London critic Souhami ... Souhami's nonjudgmental (sometimes witty) reporting serves the reader well by scrutinizing this idiosyncratic pairing in all aspects, appealing and not." [19]
Two scholarly reviewers, Linda Wagner-Martin and Anne Charles, were less impressed with the book.
Linda Wagner-Martin in American Literature complained that "[o]ne of the problems with the book is that her focus on the two makes them exactly that—college-educated, upper-class Jewish women, products of turn-of-the-century social and moral patterns. It unfortunately omits Gertrude's claim to gloire, her writing and—perhaps in some ways as interesting—her philosophy of twentieth-century art and letters. When Souhami, herself a British novelist, announces in her preface that she is not concerned with Stein's writing, the reader is forced to wonder why the book was written. [20]
Anne Charles in the NWSA Journal lamented the way the book was documented and written: "The fact that Souhami's aim is emphatically not academic is clearly conveyed at the end of her brief preliminary remarks when she explains her often incomplete and confusing documentation system as an effort 'to avoid cluttering the text with footnotes.' In addition, Souhami's sometimes infelicitous descriptive displays are illustrated early as she encapsulates Stein and Toklas, in part, as 'two odd-looking ... women.'" [21]
Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.
Alice Babette Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.
Everybody's Autobiography is a book by Gertrude Stein, published in 1937.
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a book by Gertrude Stein, written in October and November 1932 and published in 1933. It employs the form of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. In 1998, Modern Library ranked it as one of the 20 greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.
Henri-Pierre Roché was a French author who was involved with the artistic avant-garde in Paris and the Dada movement.
Samuel Morris Steward, also known as Phil Andros, Phil Sparrow, was an American tattoo artist and pornographer.
Waiting for the Moon is a 1987 internationally co-produced drama film starring Linda Hunt, Linda Bassett, Bernadette Lafont, Bruce McGill, Jacques Boudet and Andrew McCarthy. The film was written by Mark Magill and directed by Jill Godmilow.
Margaret Caroline Anderson was the American founder, editor and publisher of the art and literary magazine The Little Review, which published a collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. The periodical is most noted for introducing many prominent American and British writers of the 20th century, such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, in the United States and publishing the first thirteen chapters of James Joyce's then-unpublished novel Ulysses.
William Edwards Cook was an American-born expatriate artist, architectural patron, and long-time friend of American writer Gertrude Stein. Following his 1903 departure from the U.S., Cook resided in Paris, Rome, Russia, and on the island of Majorca, in the Balearic Islands off the eastern coast of Spain. Today he is chiefly remembered not for his artistic achievements, but because, during World War I, he taught Stein to drive an automobile so that she could contribute to the French war effort, and because, in 1926, he commissioned the Swiss architect Le Corbusier to design an innovative cubist home, on the outskirts of Paris, now called Maison Cook or Villa Cook.
Ker-Xavier Roussel was a French painter associated with Les Nabis.
Harriet Lane Levy is a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a girlhood friend of Alice B. Toklas, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein.
The Book of Salt is a 2003 debut novel by Vietnamese-American author Monique Truong.
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, first published in 1954, is one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time. Alice B. Toklas, writer Gertrude Stein's life partner, wrote the book to make up for her unwillingness at the time to write her memoirs, in deference to Stein's 1933 book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
Edward Einhorn is an American playwright, theater director, and novelist.
Bravig Imbs was an American novelist and poet as well as a broadcaster and newspaperman.
Diana Souhami is an English writer of biographies, short stories and plays. She is noted for her unconventional biographies of prominent lesbians.
27 rue de Fleurus was the home of the American writer Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas from 1903 to 1938. It is in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the Left Bank. It was also the home of Gertrude's brother Leo Stein for a time in the early 20th century. It was a renowned Saturday evening gathering place for avant-garde artists and writers, notably Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway.
27 is an opera by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek in a prologue and five acts that explores the relationship of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and the salons that they hosted at their residence at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. The work was commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. The full cast of five singers was featured on the cover of the June 2014 issue of Opera News. The opera premiered on June 14, 2014, in a production directed by James Robinson and conducted by Michael Christie at the Loretto-Hilton Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The world premiere was recorded by Albany Records.
Linda Simon is professor emerita of English at Skidmore College.
Mira Edgerly-Korzybska, also known as Myra Edgerly and Countess de Korzybska, was an American painter. She specialized in miniature portraits on ivory, though her "miniatures" tended to be larger than average.