Stein, Gertrude. (1874 - 1946).

L i f e

- born in a cultured and sophisticated family of German-Jewish origin

- travelled Europe, received university education (Radcliffe College), studied medicine and psychology x but: abandoned these for literature

- moved with her brother Leo to Paris = the centre of post-impressionism and cubism, collected paintings, and made Paris her adopted home and their apartment a meeting place for painters and writers

- a long-time lover of Alice B. Toklas

W o r k

- a famous hostess, entertainer, collector, writer, and author of clever aphorisms: ‘You are all a lost generation.’

< modern painting

- style: a literary cubism = non-mimetic, abstract, emphasised the method rather than the theme

- language: experimental, playful, broke most rules governing punctuation and syntax, and many governing diction

- made the reader pay attention to even the simplest, familiar, often monosyllabic words

- dismissed the sentence, abolished the paragraph x paid attention to the word, rejected the noun, and made gerund her favourite form

- celebrated the ‘thing seen at the moment it is seen’, presented the ‘continuous present’

- delighted in rhythmical repetition of images

=> her portraits of people and objects often whimsical in the extreme

F i c t i o n :

Three Lives (1905):

- 3 stories of 3 very different Baltimore woman-servants

- stylistic innovations: present tense narrative = the method of ‘continuous present’

The Making of Americans (1908):

- intended to tell ‘everybody's history’

- drew on the history of her family x but: minimised action and avoided dialogue

Tender Buttons (1914):

- a series of paragraphs

- some playful and witty x others brief prose poems on different subjects

A u t o b i o g r a p h y :

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)

Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)

C r i t i c i s m :

Composition as Explanation (1926)

Narration (1935)