Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 3,
1874, to an affluent Jewish family, spent her early childhood in
Vienna and Paris, and later grew up in Oakland, California. Her
first important book was Three Lives (1909), then Tender
Buttons (1914), followed by her magnum opus, The Making of
Americans (1925), and the book which became a huge popular
success, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Just
before her death at the age of 72 on July 27, 1946, she asked Alice
Toklas from her hospital bed, “What is the answer?” Getting no
answer, she then asked, “In that case, what is the question?”
Catharine R. Stimpson and Harriet Chessman,
volume editors, are Dean of the New York University School of Arts
and Sciences and the author of Someone Not Really Her Mother,
respectively.
“Few have left their mark on this century’s literature as has Gertrude Stein. More than just influencing prose and poetry as one of our premier innovators of language, she is, you could say, one of the figures who invented 20th-century writing.” —Library Journal
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