Â鶹APP

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, New York by Carl Van Vechten –

Top 10 Little-Known Facts about Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Â鶹APP in 1903 and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Â鶹APP 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.

Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, to upper-middle-class Jewish parents, Daniel Stein and Amelia Stein, née Keyser. Her father was a wealthy businessman with real estate holdings. German and English were spoken in their home. Here are the Top 10 Little-Known Facts about Gertrude Stein.

1. Stein published one of the greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century

In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Â鶹APP years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas employs the form of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. In 1998, Modern Library ranked it as one of the 20 greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.

2. “A rose is a rose is a rose” is among  Stein’s most famous quotations

Gertrude Stein at “Les Charwelles,” June 12, 1934 by Carl Van Vechten –

The sentence “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem “Sacred Emily”, which appeared in the 1922 book Geography and Plays. In that poem, the first “Rose” is the name of a person. 

Stein later used variations on the sentence in other writings, and the shortened form “A rose is a rose is a rose” is among her most famous quotations, often interpreted as meaning things are what they are, a statement of the law of identity.

3. Some of her books are sourced from several of Stein’s friends’ lives

Her books include Q.E.D. of 1903, about a lesbian romantic affair involving several of Stein’s friends; Fernhurst, a fictional story about a love triangle; Three Lives of 1905–06; The Making of Americans of 1902–1911; and Tender Buttons of 1914.

A love triangle or eternal triangle is a scenario or circumstance, usually depicted as a rivalry, in which two people are pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with one person, or in which one person in a romantic relationship with someone is simultaneously pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with someone else.

4. After the end of WWII, Stein expressed admiration for Vichy leader Marshal Pétain

Philippe Pétain by Harris & Ewing –

Her activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France, Stein may have only been able to sustain her lifestyle as an art collector, and indeed to ensure her physical safety, through the protection of the powerful Vichy government official and Nazi collaborator Bernard Faÿ. After the war ended, Stein expressed admiration for another Nazi collaborator, Vichy leader Marshal Pétain.

5. Stein attended Radcliffe College and was a student of psychology

Radcliffe College was a women’s liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Stein attended Radcliffe College, then an annex of Harvard University, from 1893 to 1897 and was a student of psychologist William James. 

With James’s supervision, Stein and another student, Leon Mendez Solomons, performed experiments on normal motor automatism, a phenomenon hypothesized to occur in people when their attention is divided between two simultaneous intelligent activities such as writing and speaking.

6. Stein enrolled at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1897 

Gertrude Stein by George Eastman House –

William James, who had become a committed mentor to Stein at Radcliffe, recognizing her intellectual potential, and declaring her his “most brilliant woman student”, encouraged Stein to enroll in medical school. Although Stein professed no interest in either the theory or practice of medicine, she enrolled at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1897. 

In her fourth year, Stein failed an important course, lost interest, and left. Ultimately, medical school had bored her, and she had spent many of her evenings not applying herself to her studies, but taking long walks and attending the opera. Stein’s tenure at Johns Hopkins was marked by challenges and stress. Men dominated the medical field, and the inclusion of women in the profession was not unreservedly or unanimously welcomed.

7. Stein cultivated important art world connections

From 1903 until 1914, when they dissolved their common household, Gertrude and her brother Leo shared living quarters near the Luxembourg Gardens on the Left Bank of Â鶹APP in a two-story apartment with the adjacent studio located on the interior courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, 6th arrondissement. 

Here they accumulated the works of art that formed a collection that became renowned for its prescience and historical importance. The art collection increased and the walls at Rue de Fleurus were rearranged continually to make way for new acquisitions.

8. Stein gathered prominent personalities who shaped modernism in literature and art

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, with American flag as backdrop by Carl Van Vechten –

The gatherings in the Stein home brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art. Dedicated attendees included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Gavin Williamson, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Francis Cyril Rose, Bob Brown, René Crevel, Élisabeth de Gramont, Francis Picabia, Claribel Cone, Mildred Aldrich, Jane Peterson, Carl Van Vechten and Henri Matisse. Saturday evenings had been set as the fixed day and time for the formal congregation so Stein could work at her writing uninterrupted by impromptu visitors.

9. Some of Stein’s writings have been set to music by composers 

Some of these include Virgil Thomson’s operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All, and James Tenney’s setting of Rose is a rose is a rose as a canon dedicated to Philip Corner, beginning with “a” on an upbeat and continuing so that each repetition shuffles the words, e.g. “a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose.

10. When Stein visited America, she met the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt

In October 1934, Stein arrived in America after a 30-year absence. Disembarking from the ocean liner in New York, she encountered a throng of reporters.

In Washington, D.C. Stein was invited to have tea with the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. In Beverly Hills, California, she visited actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, who reportedly discussed the future of cinema with her. 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.