Works by
Gertrude Stein
(Writer)
[1874 - 1946]

Works

• Three Lives (1909)
  Three Lives - three short stories by Gertrude Stein - has had a curious history. First published in 1909 by the Grafton Press, this book of short stories has consistently maintained a striking underground reputation. "Three Lives" is an astonishing masterpiece when one considers that it was its author's first book. Reasonably enough, considering Gertrude Stein's subsequent association with painters, the book is imbued with the influence of Cézanne more than with that of any literary forerunner. The subject matter, two servant girls and an unhappy afro-american girl, is similar to the subject matter of the realists, Zola and Flaubert, but so different is the treatment that any question of influence may be immediately dismissed. Nothing in this writing is extraneous: every detail represents the whole and is essential to it. If we cannot look back of Miss Stein and find a literary ancestor, it is easy to look forward: a vast sea of writers seems to be swimming in the inspiration derived from this prose. (Carl Van Vechten)

• Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein (1909 - 1912)
  Three experimental pieces, written between 1909 and 1912, involved such stylistic devices as repeated variations on a limited set of sentences and phrases, and "word portraits." Includes, in addition to title piece, "A Long Gay Book" and "Many, Many Women." Will be of special interest to students of modernism.

• Three Lives and Tender Buttons (1914)
  Gertrude Stein's first significant work presents extraordinary psychological portraits of three women. "The Good Anna", "The Gentle Lena", "Melanctha". The book's style was influenced by the Cezanne portrait under which she sat while writing. The repetitive sentences, juxtaposition of sounds, and simple language follow her famous method of composition: "to begin again and again, " to "use everything, " and to maintain a "continuous present. "

• Geography and Plays (1922)
  From one of the modern era's most influential and boldly experimental writers — a generous collection of poems, stories and plays — all dating from 1910–1920. Wide range of the author's styles reveal Stein as philosopher, poet, portraitist, dramatist and short story writer, as the investigator of the nature of language, and much more.

• Four Saints in Three Acts -- An Opera to be Sung  (1929)

• Useful Knowledge (1929)

• How to Write (1931)
  Not so much a "how-to" guide as an inspirational journey into the craft of writing by one of the 20th-century's most influential and unconventional literary figures. Also valuable as an entry into Stein's own writings.

• Stanzas in Meditation (1932)
  Stein's great work/first book appearance since '56.

• The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
  Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

• The Making of Americans, Being a History of a Family's Progress (1934)

• Lectures in America (1935)

• The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind (1936)
  Geographical History also elaborates on Stein's concepts of identity, landscape, presence, and composition. Today, as literary discourse pays more attention to textuality; to voice, reader-response, and phenomenology, Stein emerges as a pioneering modernist to whom the century is slowly catching up. For those in the performing arts, Geographical History further addresses the notion of play as landscape, one of Stein's most influential theatrical ideas, as well as such issues as dialogue, character, and dramatic structure -- in a book that is itself a model of modern experimentation.

• Everybody's Autobiography (1937)
  In 1937, Gertrude Stein wrote a sequel to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, but this darker and more complex work was long misunderstood and neglected. An account of her experiences in the wake of having authored a bestseller, Everybody's Autobiography is as funny and engaging as The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, but it is also a searing meditation on the meaning of success and identity in America. Posing as the representative American, Stein transforms her story into history--responding to the tradition of Thoreau and Henry Adams, she writes: "I used to be fond of saying that America, which was supposed to be a land of success, was a land of failure. Most of the great men in America had a long life of early failure and a long life of later failure." Everybody's Autobiography is Stein at her most accessible and her most serious, and may yet prove to be among her most popular books.

• Picasso (1938)
  Intimate, revealing memoir of Picasso as man and artist by influential literary figure. Highly readable amalgam of biographical fact, artistic and aesthetic comments: Picasso as founder of Cubism, associate of Apollinaire, Braque, Derain, other notables; titanic, creative spirit. One of Stein's most accessible works.

• The World Is Round (1939) with Clement Hurd, illustrator

• Paris France (1940)

• Ida: A Novel (1941)

• Wars I Have Seen (1945)

• Brewsie and Willie (1946)

• The Mother of Us All. Together with the Scenario by Maurice Grosserl (1947, 1949)

• Last Operas and Plays (1949)

• Things As They Are (1950)
  A novel in three parts, written in 1903 and published for the first time in 1950 from the manuscript owned by Carl Van Vechten.

• Alphabets and Birthdays (1957)

• Picasso (1984)

• Operas & Plays (1987) with James R. Mellow

• Lifting Belly (1989) with Rebecca Mark, ed. -- Winner, 1989 Lambda Literary Award's Editor's Choice Award

• Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (1990)
  "This collection, a retrospective exhibit of the work of a woman who created a unique place for herself in the world of letters, contains a sample of practically every period and every manner in Gertrude Stein's career. It includes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its entirety; selected passages from The Making of Americans; "Melanctha" from Three Lives; portraits of the painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso; Tender Buttons; the opera Four Saints in Three Acts; and poem, plays, lectures, articles, sketches, and a generous portion of her famous book on the Occupation of France, Wars I Have Seen.

• Geography and Plays (1993)

• Stein: Writings 1903-1932 (Volume 1) (1998)
  These days Gertrude Stein is remembered mainly for the notorious "autobiography" she wrote with her lover and long-time companion, Alice B. Toklas. Yet The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is only a sliver of that remarkable woman's literary output. Courted during the '20s, dismissed by critics in the '30s, rehabilitated in the '50s, Stein's reputation has ebbed and flowed with every new generation of readers. Now, however, the Library of America has given her its official stamp of approval as a Great American Writer by dedicating its 99th and 100th volumes to collecting together her voluminous works. Volume 1 covers Stein's work between the years 1903 and 1932 and includes a fascinating mix of previously unpublished prose (her 1903 novel Q.E.D., theater work such as Four Saints in Three Acts, and of course, her poetry, experimental prose, lectures, and essays). For Gertrude Stein aficionados, this collection is a welcome and long-awaited event. -- Amazon.com

• Three Lives & Tender Buttons (2003)

• Gertrude Stein: When This You See, Remember Me (1970)
  Movie, Perry Miller Adato, director   VHS
  A biographical look at the life and contemporary impact of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). At Radcliffe a student of William James, to Paris with her brother Leo: they take up residence at 27 rue de Fleurus and buy their first paintings by Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, and, later, Picasso. Saturday evenings become salon night. She begins writing, influenced by Cezanne's idea to let each part be as important as the whole. She meets Alice B. Toklas. Hemingway comes under her spell. She contrives to purchase Bilignin. After World War II, she has a triumphal tour of the USA. Friends and acquaintances speak; her words and those of Toklas make up the rest of the narration. 

• Paris Was a Woman (1996)
  Movie: DVD VHS:  Greta Schiller, director with Juliet Stevenson and Maureen All
  
  Female (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind. Archival footage, music, paintings, literature, and interviews with folks who were there. Berenice Abbott, Gisele Freund, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Colette, Janet Flanner and others. In addition, Matisse, Picasso, Hemingway, and James Joyce.

See also:

• Flowers of Friendship: Letters written to Gertrude Stein (1953) by Donald Gallup

• The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World (1959) by John Malcolm Brinnin

• Gertrude Stein: Writings and Lectures 1909-1945 (1967) by Patricia Meyerowitz

• Everybody Who Was Anybody: A Biography of Gertrude Stein (1978) by Janet Hobhouse

• Walks in Gertrude Stein's Paris (1988) by Mary Ellen Haight

• Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company (1991) by James R. Mellow

• Gertrude and Alice (1992) by Diana Souhami

• Gertrude Stein Remembered (1994) by Linda Simon

• "Favored Strangers": Gertrude Stein and Her Family (1995) by Linda Wagner-Martin

• Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism (1995) by Steven Watson

• Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein (1996) by Brenda Wineapple

• Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1999), Kay Turner, ed.
  Off and on, during the entire period they were together, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas wrote each other little love notes. Calling her "wifey" and most often addressing her as "baby precious," Stein scribbled her love for Toklas in quick moments of unself-conscious desire. And on occasion, Toklas penned or typed letters back to her "husband." Because the couple was virtually inseparable, the notes were written and exchanged at home.
  
  Baby Precious Always Shines presents selections from this previously unpublished correspondence. In first-person documentation, in direct address, these brief mantralike enticements—tender, beseeching, funny and game, sexually charged and sincere, quotidian and queer—disclose the intimacies of a deeply committed, very rare, and at the same time, very ordinary marriage between two of the twentieth century's most famous women. Toklas called their notes "a beautiful form of literature." They are indeed, and when pieced together, they create a tantalizing mosaic, a portrait of a marriage that helped shape the course of modernism and modern lesbianism.

• To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays (2000)

• The Gertrude Stein Reader: The Great American Pioneer of Avant-Garde Letters (2002) by Richard Kostelanetz

• Henry James and Queer Modernity (2003) by Eric Haralson
  Eric Haralson examines the far-reaching changes in gender politics and the emergence of modern male homosexuality in writings of Henry James and three authors greatly influenced by him: Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Emphasizing American masculinity portrayed in fiction between 1875 and 1935, Haralson traces James' engagement with sexual politics from his first novels of the 1870s to his "major phase" at the turn of the century

• The Book of Salt (2003) by Monique Truong
  "[He] came to us through an advertisement that I had in desperation put in the newspaper. It began captivatingly for those days: 'Two American ladies wish . . .' " It was these lines in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book that inspired The Book of Salt, a brilliant first novel by acclaimed Vietnamese American writer Monique Truong. In Paris, in 1934, Bnh has accompanied his employers, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, to the train station for their departure to America. His own destination is unclear: will he go with "the Steins," stay in France, or return to his native Vietnam? Bnh has fled his homeland in disgrace, leaving behind his malevolent charlatan of a father and his self-sacrificing mother. For five years, he has been the live-in cook at the famous apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus. Before Bnh's decision is revealed, his mesmerizing narrative catapults us back to his youth in French-colonized Vietnam, his years as a galley hand at sea, and his days turning out fragrant repasts for the doyennes of the Lost Generation. Bnh knows far more than the contents of the Steins' pantry: he knows their routines and intimacies, their manipulations and follies. With wry insight, he views Stein and Toklas ensconced in blissful domesticity. But is Bnh's account reliable? A lost soul, he is a late-night habitu of the Paris demimonde, an exile and an alien, a man of musings and memories, and, possibly, lies. Love is the prize that has eluded him, from his family to the men he has sought out in his far-flung journeys, often at his peril. Intricate, compelling, and witty, the novel weaves in historical characters, from Stein and Toklas to Paul Robeson and Ho Chi Minh, with remarkable originality. Flavors, seas, sweat, tears The Book of Salt is an inspired feast of storytelling riches.

• The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara: Reading Gay American Writers (2003) by Rick Whitaker
  Those who first met Rick Whitaker through his unrepentant memoir know that he was not a typical prostitute. This "Wittgenstein- and Freud-quoting" hustler is at core a thinker—and a voracious reader, one who has written book reviews for The New York Times and The Washington Post. In The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara, Whitaker discusses the books that have altered his perception and influenced the way he conducts his life. Although not all of Whitaker's favorite books are written by homosexuals, many — all included here — are. Linked essays on gay writers include David Wojnarowicz, Emily Dickinson, Frank O'Hara, Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane, and Walt Whitman. These sexual outsiders share what Whitaker calls a "gay sensibility": they describe without describing, show while hiding, and sing while keeping silent. Black-and-white photographs are also featured.

• A Natural History of Pragmatism: The Fact of Feeling from Jonathan Edwards to Gertrude Stein (2007) by Joan Richardson
  Joan Richardson provides a fascinating and compelling account of the emergence of the quintessential American philosophy: pragmatism. She demonstrates pragmatism's engagement with various branches of the natural sciences and traces the development of Jamesian pragmatism from the late nineteenth century through modernism, following its pointings into the present. Richardson combines strands from America's religious experience with scientific information to offer interpretations that break new ground in literary and cultural history. This book exemplifies the value of interdisciplinary approaches to producing literary criticism. In a series of highly original readings of Edwards, Emerson, William and Henry James, Stevens, and Stein, A Natural History of Pragmatism tracks the interplay of religious motive, scientific speculation, and literature in shaping an American aesthetic. Wide-ranging and bold, this groundbreaking book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of American literature.

• Picasso and Gertrude Stein (2007) by Vincent Giroud