author
Gertrude Stein
1874–1946
An American modernist who made Paris a center of avant-garde culture, she became famous for daring experiments in language and for the lively memoir that introduced many readers to that world. Her writing can feel playful, puzzling, and surprisingly funny all at once.
4 Audiobooks
Tender Buttons Objects—Food—Rooms
by Gertrude Stein
Geography and Plays
by Gertrude Stein
Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein With Two Shorter Stories
by Gertrude Stein
Three Lives Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena
by Gertrude Stein
About the author
Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1874 and raised partly in California, she studied at Radcliffe College and later at Johns Hopkins Medical School before turning fully to writing. She settled in Paris, where her home at 27 rue de Fleurus became a well-known gathering place for artists and writers.
Stein is remembered as one of the boldest voices of literary modernism. Works such as Three Lives, Tender Buttons, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas show her fascination with repetition, rhythm, and the sounds of everyday speech. She also played an important role in the artistic life around her, championing painters including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse and encouraging younger writers who came through Paris.
Her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas, was central to both her personal life and public story. Stein died in France in 1946, but her influence has lasted far beyond her lifetime: readers still return to her for the freedom, strangeness, and freshness of her style.