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| Author | Gertrude Stein |
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| Language | English |
| Genre | autobiography |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace and Company |
Publication date | 1933 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 310 pp |
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a book by Gertrude Stein, written in October and November 1932 and published in 1933. [1] 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. [2]
Alice B. Toklas, as narrator of the work, tells how she was born into an affluent family in San Francisco, describing her parents' backgrounds and family history. Later she describes meeting Gertrude Stein's sister-in-law during the fires in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and decided to move to Paris in 1907.
Alice writes about the important role of Hélène, Gertrude's housemaid, in their household in Paris. She mentions preparations for an art exhibition. She discusses Pablo Picasso and his mistress Fernande Olivier. Picasso and Fernande end their relationship, and Fernande moves to Montparnasse to teach French. Alice and Gertrude visit her there.
Alice tells of Gertrude and her brother Leo Stein buying paintings by Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse from Ambroise Vollard. They subsequently all become friends. She next discusses spending the summer with Gertrude in Fiesole, Italy, while Picasso goes to Spain. Back in France, Gertrude falls out with Guillaume Apollinaire. Later, Picasso has an argument with Matisse.
Alice tells how Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then moved to Vienna, to Passy, and finally to New York City and California. She attended Radcliffe College, where she was taught by William James. She decided to study for a master's degree at Johns Hopkins University but dropped out because she was bored, then moved to London and was bored there too, returned to America, and eventually settled in Paris.
The episode describes the home at 27 rue de Fleurus, noting the layout of the rooms and studio (atelier). Alice tells stories about Matisse, other artists, and the writer Apollinaire. She recounts holidays in Italy and Spain with Gertrude. Finally, they move to England on the eve of World War I to meet with Gertrude's editor, leaving Mildred Aldrich alone in Paris.
Gertrude and Alice begin the war years in England, and then go briefly to France to rescue Gertrude's writings. They then live in Spain for a while, and eventually move back to France. There, they volunteer for the American Fund for the French Wounded, driving through France to help the wounded and homeless. By the end of the war, Paris seems changed.
Alice tells of Gertrude's argument with T. S. Eliot after he finds one of her writings inappropriate. She talks about her friendship with Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, who helped with the publication of The Making of Americans . There the couple makes friends with a coterie of Russian artists, but they constitute no artistic movement. Later, Gertrude gives a lecture at Oxford University. Alice then mentions more parties with artists. Later, they abridge The Making of Americans to four hundred pages for commercial reasons and devise the idea of writing an autobiography.
Gertrude Stein admitted to writing the work in six weeks with the aim of making money. [3] However, she did not like writing it for that particular reason, and Alice didn't think it would be a success. [4] It was the first of Stein's writings to be published in the Atlantic Monthly , much to her joy. The magazine published sixty per cent of the book, in four installments. [5]
As for her friends, Carl Van Vechten liked it; Henry McBride thought it was too commercial; Ernest Hemingway called it a "damned pitiful book"; Henri Matisse was offended by the descriptions of his wife; and Georges Braque thought that Stein had misconstrued Cubism. Her brother Leo Stein deemed it a "farrago of lies". [6] The commercial success that came with her book enabled Stein to live a more prosperous lifestyle. [7]
According to Virgil Thomson, who wrote music to libretti written by Stein, the "book is in every way except actual authorship Alice Toklas's book; it reflects her mind, her language, her private view of Gertrude, also her unique narrative powers. Every story in it is told as Alice herself had always told it. ... Every story that ever came into the house eventually got told in Alice's way, and this was its definitive version." [8]
Several critics, including Jeanette Winterson, have noted that in this book Stein created a new literary form, building upon Virginia Woolf's fictional biography Orlando to make her own reinterpretation of the autobiographical genre. [9]
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.
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
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.
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onwards – when he took part at the controversial 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition – his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. The paintings he made in the period of 1905–1910 are considered by some to be his most important works. The themes of his work from that period are predominantly centered on the nightlife. He painted dancers, singers, masquerades, and theatre. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous – at times garish – portraits, especially of women.
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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.
Mildred Aldrich (1853-1928) was an American journalist, editor, writer and translator. She spent her early career as a journalist and editor in Boston before moving to Paris, where she continued working as a foreign correspondent and translator. In 1914, shortly before the start of World War I, she retired to a house in the French countryside overlooking the Marne River valley. She published a novel and four accounts of her life based on collections of her letters written during the war years. In 1922, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour in recognition of her assistance to soldiers and refugees, and the influence her books apparently had in persuading the United States government to declare war on Germany.
Claribel Cone (1864–1929) and Etta Cone (1870–1949), collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors, world travelers, and socialites during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. They gathered one of the best known private collections of modern art in the United States at their Baltimore apartments, and the collection now makes up a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Their collection was estimated to be worth almost a billion US dollars in 2002.
Harriet Lane Levy was a California writer best known for her memoir, 920 O’Farrell Street. Levy was also an avid art collector, a childhood friend of Alice B. Toklas, and an acquaintance of Gertrude Stein.
Mary A. Bookstaver (1875–1950) was a feminist, political activist, and editor, widely known by the nickname "May." Daughter of Judge Henry W. Bookstaver and Mary Baily Young, she attended Miss Florence Baldwin's School and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1898 in history and political science. After graduation she moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she was part of a circle of lesbian Bryn Mawr graduates, including Bookstaver's lover, Mabel Haynes. Gertrude Stein, then a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine student, became infatuated with Bookstaver, who found Stein's naïveté literally laughable, but introduced Stein to physical love. The experience made a deep impression on Stein, whose first novel, QED, completed in Baltimore in 1903, was an autobiographical account of this love triangle, with Bookstaver's character named "Helen Thomas."
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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.
Writers in Paris in the 1920s refer to the American expatriate writers in Paris in the 1920s. They created literary works and movements that influence the global literary landscape to date. During the 1920s, political, economic, and social issues shaped the inspiration behind many of the writers in Paris. The American writers in Paris in the 1920s are referred to as the Lost Generation.
Gertrude and Alice is a 1991 book about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas by English biographer Diana Souhami.
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The Closerie des Lilas is a famous Parisian restaurant located on the boulevard du Montparnasse in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1847 by Francois Bullier and was a simple brasserie at the beginning. Initially, it was called after a theater piece called « La Closerie des Genets » of Frédéric Soulié. It progressively evolved into the "Closerie des Lilas" because its owner, Bullier, used to plant Lilac flowers.
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