76 Facts About Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector.

Gertrude Stein 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.

In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B Toklas, her life partner.

Gertrude Stein's father was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings.

Gertrude Stein's siblings were: Michael, Simon, Bertha, and Leo.

When Gertrude Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna, and then Paris.

Gertrude Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, but she often read: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Scott, Burns, Smollett, Fielding, and more.

In Baltimore, Gertrude Stein met Claribel and Etta Cone, who held Saturday evening salons that she would later emulate in Paris.

The Cones shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it and modeled a domestic division of labor that Stein would replicate in her relationship with Alice B Toklas.

Gertrude Stein attended Radcliffe College, then an annex of Harvard University, from 1893 to 1897 and was a student of psychologist William James.

In 1897, Gertrude Stein spent the summer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, studying embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory.

The unhappy love triangle demoralized Gertrude Stein, arguably contributing to her decision to abandon her medical studies.

Leo Gertrude Stein cultivated important art world connections, enabling the Gertrude Stein holdings to grow over time.

In 1906, Picasso completed Portrait of Gertrude Stein, which remained in her collection until her death.

Gertrude Stein remained dedicated to Cezanne, nonetheless, leaving all the artist's works with his sister, taking with him only a Cezanne painting of "5 apples".

Gertrude Stein did not see Leo Gertrude Stein again until after World War I, and then through only a brief greeting on the street in Paris.

At her death, Gertrude Stein's remaining collection emphasized the artwork of Picasso and Juan Gris, most of her other pictures having been sold.

Gertrude Stein's personality has dominated the provenance of the Stein art legacy.

Gertrude Stein concentrated on the work of Juan Gris, Andre Masson, and Sir Francis Rose.

Gertrude Stein insisted on showing his incapacity: he spread his lack of success: showing what he could not do, became an obsession for him.

Gertrude Stein persisted by deepening the things which Cezanne wanted to do, but it was too hard a task for him: it killed him.

The gatherings in the Gertrude Stein home "brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art".

Gertrude Stein's works include novels, plays, stories, libretti, and poems written in a highly idiosyncratic, playful, repetitive, and humorous style.

Miss Gertrude Stein is unfortunately too busy herself to be able to tell you herself, but trusts that you will eventually come to understand that each and every word that she writes means exactly what she says, for she says very exactly what she means, and really nothing more, but, of course, nothing less.

Gertrude Stein predominantly used the present progressive tense, creating a continuous presence in her work, which Grahn argues is a consequence of the previous principles, especially commonality and centeredness.

Mabel was enthusiastic about Gertrude Stein's sprawling publication The Makings of Americans and, at a time when Gertrude Stein had much difficulty selling her writing to publishers, privately published 300 copies of Portrait of Mabel Dodge at Villa Curonia.

In Gertrude Stein's writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music.

In October 1934, Gertrude Stein arrived in America after a 30-year absence.

Front-page articles on Gertrude Stein appeared in almost every New York City newspaper.

Gertrude Stein's tour was partly to give public lectures, and she prepared each individually; the audiences were limited to five hundred attendees.

Gertrude Stein spoke, reading from notes, and provided for an audience question and answer period at the end of her presentation.

The predominant feeling was that Gertrude Stein was a compelling presence, a fascinating personality who could hold listeners with the "musicality of her language".

In Washington, DC Gertrude Stein was invited to have tea with the President's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Gertrude Stein left America in May 1935, a newly minted American celebrity with a commitment from Random House, who had agreed to become the American publisher for all of her future works.

Mellow observes that, in 1904,30-year-old Gertrude Stein "had evidently determined that the 'small hard reality' of her life would be writing".

Gertrude Stein attributed the inception of Three Lives to the inspiration she received from a portrait Cezanne had painted of his wife and which was in the Gertrude Stein collection.

Gertrude Stein credited this as a revelatory moment in the evolution of her writing style.

Gertrude Stein began Three Lives during the spring of 1905 and finished it the following year.

Gertrude Stein's biographer has uncovered evidence that it actually began in 1902 and did not end until 1911.

Gertrude Stein compared her work to James Joyce's Ulysses and to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

Gertrude Stein wrote the bulk of the novel between 1903 and 1911, and evidence from her manuscripts suggests three major periods of revision during that time.

Gertrude Stein ignored Mabel's exhortations and published 1,000 copies of the book in 1914.

Gertrude Stein was a golden brown presence, burned by the Tuscan sun and with a golden glint in her warm brown hair.

Gertrude Stein was dressed in a warm brown corduroy suit.

Gertrude Stein wore a large round coral brooch and when she talked, very little, or laughed, a good deal, I thought her voice came from this brooch.

Soon thereafter, Gertrude Stein introduced Toklas to Pablo Picasso at his Bateau-Lavoir studio, where he was at work on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

That summer, Gertrude Stein stayed with Michael and Sarah Gertrude Stein, their son Allan, and Leo in a nearby villa.

In "Harriet", Gertrude Stein considers Levy's nonexistent plans for the summer, following her nonexistent plans for the winter:.

Gertrude Stein said she did not have any plans for the summer.

Gertrude Stein had not made plans for the summer and she had not made plans for the following winter.

Gertrude Stein attempted to enter an ancillary arrangement in which she would forward Gris living expenses in exchange for future pictures.

Toklas and Stein returned to Paris in June 1916, and acquired a Ford automobile with the help of associates in the United States; Gertrude learned to drive it with the help of her friend William Edwards Cook.

Gertrude Stein and Alice, who were both Jewish, escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Fay who was a collaborator with the Vichy regime and had connections to the Gestapo, or possibly because Gertrude Stein was an American and a famous author.

Gertrude Stein maintained at the time that she detested "passion in its many disguised forms".

Gertrude Stein became enamored of Bookstaver but was unsuccessful in advancing their relationship.

Ernest Hemingway describes how Alice was Gertrude's "wife" in that Stein rarely addressed his wife, and he treated Alice the same, leaving the two "wives" to chat.

Gertrude Stein took a ferry to Oakland to visit the farm she grew up on, and the house she lived in near what is 13th Avenue and E 25th Street in Oakland.

Gertrude Stein took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Gertrude Stein publicly endorsed General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and admired Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Petain.

Gertrude Stein was outspoken in her hostility to some liberal reforms of progressive politics.

In 1941, at Fay's suggestion, Gertrude Stein consented to translate into English some 180 pages of speeches made by Marshal Philippe Petain.

Gertrude Stein writes of the high esteem in which Petain is held by his countrymen; France respected and admired the man who had struck an armistice with Hitler.

Random House publisher Bennett Cerf had read the introduction Gertrude Stein had written for the translations and was horrified by what she had produced.

In 1944, Gertrude Stein wrote that Petain's policies were "really wonderful so simple so natural so extraordinary".

Gertrude Stein was able to condemn the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor while simultaneously maintaining the dissonant acceptance of Hitler as conqueror of Europe.

Gertrude Stein had been urged to leave France by American embassy officials, friends and family when that possibility still existed, but declined to do so.

Gertrude Stein's concerns at its highest pitch is a well-fed apprehension.

Gertrude Stein died on July 27,1946, at the age of 72 after surgery for stomach cancer at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris.

Gertrude Stein was interred in Paris in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

On July 27,1946, Gertrude Stein was operated on for what proved to be inoperable stomach cancer and died before coming out of anesthesia.

Gertrude Stein named writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten as her literary executor, and he helped to publish works of hers that remained unpublished at the time of her death.

Why Gertrude Stein is not, finally, a good or helpful writer.

Gertrude Stein is a central character in Nick Bertozzi's 2007 graphic novel The Salon.

Gertrude Stein was portrayed in the 2011 Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris by Kathy Bates, and by Tracee Chimo in the 2018 season of the television series Genius which focuses on the life and career of Pablo Picasso.

Gertrude Stein is added to a list of great artists and notables in the popular Broadway musical Rent in the song "La Vie Boheme".

In 2014 Gertrude Stein was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".