I have hesitated to write about Gertrude Stein in the belief that she is reasonably well known by the people on this list. On the other hand, Gertrude played a very large role in the development of 20th century art and literature. She led the world deciding the great and the mediocre in 20th century art. In assisting her brother, Leo Stein's acquaintances and study of modern art provided the seed for the famous Stein art collections. He began with Bernard Berenson who hosted Gertrude and Leo in his English country house in 1902, and who suggested Paul Cézanne and Ambroise Vollard's art gallery. The joint collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein began in late 1904, when Michael Stein announced that their trust account had accumulated a balance of 8,000 francs, a windfall. They spent this windfall at Vollard's Gallery, buying Gauguin's Sunflowers and Three Tahitians, Cézanne's Bathers, and two Renoirs. The art collection grew and the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus were continuously rearranged to make way for new acquisitions.[9] In "the first half of 1905" the Steins acquired Cézanne's Portrait of Mme Cézanne and Delacroixs Perseus and Andromeda.[10] Shortly after the opening of the Paris Autumn Salon of 1905 (on October 18, 1905), the Steins acquired Matisse's Woman with the Hat and Picasso's Young Girl with Basket of Flowers Eventually Gertrude came to the realization that she preferred women to men and Alice B. Toklas became her lover for the rest of her life. For far more information about Gertrude Stein I would recommend the following URLs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein http://www.tenderbuttons.com/gsonline/index_2.html http://www.ellensplace.net/gstein1.html http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stein/stein.htm http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/315 There are many more URLs available on Google Gertrude Stein Captn John Gertrude Stein American writer, an eccentric whose Paris home was a salon for the Cubist and experimental artist and writers, among them Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. Stein, a brilliant conversationalist, became a legend with her Roman senator haircut and verbal facility. Against all odds, she survived the persecution of sexual minorities and Jews during the German occupation of France in World War II. "Most of us balk at her soporific rigmaroles, her echolaliac incantations, her half-witted-sounding catalogues on numbers; most of us read her less and less. Yet, remembering especially her early work, we are still always aware of her presence in the background of contemporary literature - and we picture her as the great pyramidal Buddha of Jo Davidson's statue of her, eternally and placidly ruminating the gradual developments of the process of being, registering the vibrations of a psychological country like some august human seismograph whose charts we haven't the training to read." (Edmund Wilson in Axel's Castle, 1931) Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, of educated German-Jewish immigrants. Her father, Daniel Stein, was a traction-company executive, who had become wealthy through his investments in street railroads and real estate. His business took the family for four years to Vienna and Paris, when Stein was a child. In 1879 the family returned to America. With her parents, she made subsequently several cultural trips to Europe. After the death of her mother and father, Stein and two of her siblings lived with her mother's family in Baltimore. In 1893 Stein entered Harvard Annex (now Radcliffe College) in Cambridge. She studied psychology under William James (1842-1910) and experimented with automatic writing under his direction. James also visited Stein in Paris in 1908. After studies at Johns Hopkins medical school, Gertrude Stein moved to Paris without taking the M.D. degree. She lived there from 1903 with her brother Leo, and from 1914 with her life companion, Alice B. Toklas, an accomplished cook for the salon's guests at the 27 Rue de Fleurus flat, near Luxembourg Gardens. Her salon attracted intellectuals and artists to discuss new ideas in art and politics. In the atmosphere of creative energy, Stein wanted to produce modern literary version of the new art. In addition, she and her brother started to collect early works by such contemporary painters as Matisse and Picasso, who later described her as his only woman friend. Picasso met her first time at an informal art gallery established by Clovis Sagot, a former clown. He also painted a portrait of Stein in a brownish-gray monochrome. "Masculine, in her voice, in all her walk," described Picasso's lover Fernande Bellevallée her. "Fat, short, massive, beautiful head, strong, with noble features, accentuated regular, intelligent eyes." Stein's first novel, Q.E.D. (1903), remained unpublished until after her death perhaps because of its intimate, lesbian nature. As a writer Stein made her debut with THREE LIVES (1909), clearly influenced by the Jameses, novelist Henry and psychologist William. Stein's book was based on a reworking of a late Flaubert text called Trois Contes. Stein also tried to connect theories of Cubism to literature, as in the essay COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION (1926), which was based on her lectures at Cambridge and Oxford. After differences emerged between the Cubists and the post-Impressionists, Stein sided with the former while her brother Leo championed the latter. Leo, who was left on the shadow of his sister, once bursted: "She's basically stupid and I'm basically intelligent." In her book about Picasso (1938) Stein recalled that in 1909 the artist showed her some photographs of a Spanish village to demonstrate how Cubist in reality they appeared. According to Stein, Picasso's paintings, such as 'Horta de Ebro' and 'Maison sur la colline' were almost exactly like the photographs. Her modernist literary style Stein lauched with THE MAKING OF AMERICANS, a family history and history of whole humanity. It was written between 1906 and 1908 but not published until 1925. Stein tried to translate in it Cubism's abstraction and disruption of perspective into a prose form and present an object or an experience from every angle simultaneously. The effect was reinforced by minimal use of punctuationn"... if writing should go on what had colons and semi-colons to do with it, what had commas to do with it" ('from 'Poetry and Grammar', in Lectures in America, 1935). As a result, her sentences grew longer and longer. Automatic writing, a technique favored by the Dadaists and Surrealists, also inspired her. >From the United States Stein's friend Mabel Dodge wrote in 1912 with enthusiasm about the Armory Show, calling it "the most important public event that has ever come off since the signing of the Declaration of Independence". The show opened in February 1913 and presented to the American public modern, revolutionary art from post-Impressionism to Cubism and Matisse. One of its most notorious exhibits was Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. Dodge's article, which compared Stein's writing to Picasso's Cubism, appeared in the magazine Art and Decoration. Although Stein met Dodge only a few times, their correspondence lasted over 20 years. The poetry collection TENDER BUTTONS (1914) was a series of still live studies, such as 'A Chair', 'A Box', 'Roastbeef', 'End of Summer' and 'Apple'. Each of these is characterized by unexpected phrases. Her aim was to search ways to name things, "that would not invent names, but mean names without naming them." Thus 'Apple' reads "Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, coloured wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato and no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece please." When England declared war on Germany, Stein was visiting the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in England, with her lover Toklas. After a brief trip to Majorca in 1915, they returned to Paris, joining the American Fund For French Wounded. She and Toklas received the French government's Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française in 1922. After the war Paris became a city of "the lost generation" as Stein would describe them, and replaced Vienna as the cultural center of avant-garde art, music and literature. 'Miss Furr and Miss Skeene', originally published in GEOGRAPHY AND PLAYS (1922), told of two women who live together. Within deliberately limited lexicon, Stein played with the meaning of the word "gay", but its underground meaning became more widely known when Vanity Fair reprinted the story in 1923. In 1934 Stein travelled to New York. Her opera, FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, music composed by Virgil Thomson, had become a huge success with an all-black cast. The procection was co-ordinated by John Houseman, who later cooperated with Orson Welles. Thomson's second opera, THE MOTHER OF US ALL (1947), was also based on Stein's text. Stein toured America, taught for several weeks at the University of Chicago, became a lifelong friend of Thornton Wilder, returned to France next year. In 'Poetry and Grammar', originally one of the lectures she gave, Stein published her most famous statement: "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." Toklas and Stein were both Jews, but they remained in France during World War II, living under the protection of Pétain in various country houses. A Vichy collaborator, who helped them to survive the occupation, was sentenced after the war to life imprisonment at hard labor. "America is my country and Paris is my home town and it is as it has come to be," Stein had once said. "After all anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high, the air heavy or clean and anybody is as there is wind or no wind there. It is that which makes them and the arts they make and the work they do and the way they eat and the way they drink and the way they learn and everything" (from 'An American and France,' 1936) In December 1944 she returned to Paris. We cannot retrace our steps, going forward may be the same as going backwards. We cannot retrace our steps, retrace our steps. All my long life, all my long life, we do not retrace our steps, all my long life, but. (A silence a long silence) (from The Mother of Us All, concluding aria) Stein's best known work, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, is actually her own autobiography. Her later memoirs were EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1937) and WARS I HAVE SEEN (1945). The last years of her live Stein suffered from cancer. She died on 27 July 1946 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Toklas lived on until 1967. Her memoirs, What is Remembered, appeared in 1963. Although Stein's works were highly modernistic and experimental, she also had a strong influence on such popular writer as Ernest Hemingway, who combined her use of repetitive patterns with vernacular speech. For further reading: Gertrude Stein by E. Sprigge (1957); Charmed Circle by James R. Mellow (1974); Everybody Who Was Anobody by Janet Hobhouse (1975); Language and Time and Gertrude Stein by C.F. Copeland (1975); Lesbian Images by J. Rule (1975); Different Language by M.A. De-Kove (1983); The Structure of Obscurity by R.K. Dubnick (1984); The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World by J.M. Brinnin (1987); Gertrude Stein by B.L. Knapp (1990); Gertrude and Alice by Diane Souhami (1991); Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures, ed. by Renate Stendhal (1994); Gertrude Stein Remembered, ed. by Linda Simon (1994) - See also: Richard Wright - Note: Stein launched the phrase "There's no there, there", originally applied to suburbanised American cities, but now used to describe the de-centered Internet. Selected bibliography: THREE LIVES, 1909 (from Flaubert's Trois Contes) TENDER BUTTONS, 1914 A MOVIE, 1920 REREAD ANOTHER, 1921 OBJECTS LIE ON TABLE, 1922 SAINTS AND SINGING, 1922 GEOGRAPHY AND PLAYS, 1922 AM I TO GO OR L'LL SAY SO, 1923 CAPITAL CAPITALS, 1923 A LIST, 1923 THE MAKING AMERICANS, 1925 COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION, 1926 A BOOK CONCLUDING WITH AS A WIFE HAS A COW, 1926 A LYRICAL OPERA MADE BY TWO TO BE SUNG, 1928 A BOUQUET, THEIR WILLS, 1928 A VILLAGE, 1928 FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, 1929 (with V. Thomson) USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, 1929 DEUX SOEURS QUI SONT PAS SOEURS, 1929 AT PRESENT, 1930 LOUIS XI AND MADAME GIRAUD, 1930 MADAME RECAMIER, 1930 PARLOR, 1930 SIX PORTRAITS, 1930 LUCY CHURCH, AMIABLY, 1930 THE FIVE GEORGES, 1931 CIVILIZATION, 1931 HOW TO WRITE, 1931 THEY MUST BE WEDDED, TO THEIR WIFE, 1931 SAY IT WITH FLOWERS, 1931 LYNN AND THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE, 1931 MATISSE, PICASSO AND GERTRUDE STEIN, 1932 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, 1933 - Alice B. Toklasin omaelämäkerta FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, 1934 PORTRAITS AND PRAYERS, 1934 LECTURES IN AMERICA, 1935 NARRATION, 1935 THE GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA, 1936 A WEDDING BOUQUET, 1937 EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 1937 PICASSO, 1938 THE WORLD IS ROUND, 1939 PARIS, FRANCE, 1940 WHAT ARE MASTERPIECES, 1940 IDA, 1941 - suom. (1988) WARS I HAVE SEEN, 1945 BREWSIE AND WILLIE, 1946 THE FIRST READER, 1946 SELECTED WRITINGS, 1946 (ed. C. Van Vechten) IN SAVOY, 1946 THE MOTHER OF US ALL, 1947 FOUR IN AMERICA, 1947 BLOOD ON THE DINING-ROOM FLOOR, 1948 LAST OPERAS AND PLAYS, 1949 THE THINGS AS THEY ARE, 1950 TWO, 1951 MRS REYNOLDS AND FIVE EARLIER NOVELLETTES, 1953 AS FINE AS MELANCTHA, 1954 PAINTED LACE AND OTHER PIECES, 1955 A NOVEL OF THANK YOU, 1955 STANZAS IN MEDITATIONAND OTHER POEMS, 1956 BEE TIME VINE AND OTHER PIECES, 1957 ALPHABETS AND BIRTHDAYS, 1957 LOOK AT ME AND HERE I AM, 1967 LUCRECIA BORGIA, 1968 GERTRUDE STEIN ON PICASSO, 1970 CORRESPONDENCE AND PERSONAL ESSAYS, 1972 FERNHURST, QED AND OTHER EARLY WRITINGS, 1972 PREVIOUSLY UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS, 1974 THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE STEIN AND CARL VAN VECHTEN 1913-1946, 1986 OPERAS & PLAYS, 1987 (first published in 1932) REALLY READING GERTRUDE STEIN, 1989 LIFTING BELLY, 1989 THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN MABEL DODGE AND GERTRUDE STEIN, 1996 GERTRUDE STEIN: WRITINGS 1903-1932, 1998 GERTRUDE STEIN: WRITINGS 1932-46, 1988