Gertrude Stein

"Three Lives" is a 1909 work of fiction by American writer Gertrude Stein. It is split into three independent stories, all set in the fictional American town of Bridgepoint. "The Good Anna" is the first of those stories and concentrates on a lower middle-class servant called Anna Federner. "Melanctha" is the longest of the stories and centres around distinctions and blending of sex, race, gender, and female health. The final story, "The Gentle Lena", focuses on the life of the eponymous Lena, a German girl brought to Bridgepoint by her cousin. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American poet, novelist, art collector, and playwright who famously hosted a Paris salon frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. Other notable works by this author include: "White Wines" (1913), "Tender Buttons - Objects. Food. Rooms." (1914), and "An Exercise in Analysis" (1917). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this classic work now in a new edition complete with an introductory essay by Sherwood Anderson.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American poet, novelist, art collector, and playwright who famously hosted a Paris salon frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. Before she was a patron to "The Lost Generation" artists, Stein was an esteemed author who influenced many 20th-century writers with her innovative and experimental prose. First published in 1909, her work "Tender Buttons" is a modernist classic and a wonderful example of her thought-provoking and highly original style of writing. Contents include: "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms". Other notable works by this author include: "Three Lives" (1909), "White Wines" (1913), and "An Exercise in Analysis" (1917). Ragged Hand is republishing this classic work now in a new edition complete with an introductory essay by Sherwood Anderson.

This selection of Gertrude Stein's work is taken from the period between 1905 and 1936, when the iconic modernist poet was engaged in an astounding number of still-surprising literary experiments, whose innovations continue to influence all the arts. Editor Joan Retallack has chosen complete texts or selections that lend themselves to a clarified vision of Stein's oeuvre. In her brilliant introduction, Retallack provides the historical and biographical context for Stein's lifelong project of composing a 'continuous present,' an effort which parallels many of the most important technological and scientific developments of her era - from moving pictures to Einstein's revision of our understanding of space and time.Retallack also addresses persistent questions about Stein's work and the best way to read it in our contemporary moment. In suggesting a performative 'reading poesis' for these works, Retallack follows Stein's dictum by arguing that to actively experience the work is to enjoy it, and to enjoy it is to understand it.

The groundbreaking writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was intensely American, though she lived most of her life in France. She returned only once to the United States, having left it at the age of twenty-nine, yet she never lost her plain American accent and manner nor her ardor for the United States. Stein approached her country with an appreciation akin to discovery. She wrote about it all—railroad stations, mailboxes, cities, farms, five-and-dime stores, drugstores, the food, the landscape, the speech, the ideas. She wrote, too, about Americans she met in France, the writers and artists who flocked there in the twenties and early thirties, the doughboys of World War I, the GIs of World War II, and Americans she met when she came home briefly in 1934-35.

In 1933, Gertrude Stein published her groundbreaking memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which gained her instant celebrity. The following year she was invited to return to the United States for the first time since she left for France in 1903, to give a series of lectures on art and literature. Newly famous, Stein delivered her lectures, which double as a manifesto for her own, notoriously difficult work, to packed audiences at universities, galleries, members' clubs and public spaces up and down the country. The lectures are vital and provocative works which articulate the legendary writer’s thoughts on the effect of modernism on literary form, the relationship between narrative and history, and between a writer, their work and its audience. In her trademark style she meditates on the creative possibilities of repetition, as well as her ambivalence toward her own literary fame and the destabilizing effect that notoriety had on her daily life. Listen to Me brings Stein's sparklingly witty, illuminating lectures together in one volume for the first time, selected and introduced by her acclaimed biographer, Francesca Wade.

Gertrude Stein’s monumental novel, back in print a century after its first publication.In The Making of Americans, Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of The Making of Americans, and on America itself.

What happened, nobody saw, but everybody knew… Why should blood on the floor make anyone mad against automobiles and telephones and desks. Why. This is what happened.’ Written in 1933, immediately following the publication of the wildly successful Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor is one of Stein’s most avant-garde pieces of writing, taking the murder mystery genre and working it masterfully into a Modernist mould. Based in part on truth, the narrative is set in – and written from – the country house where Stein and Toklas were living in rural France, and describes the strange death of their acquaintance Madame Pernollet. The novella takes the mystery and warps it, shot through as it is with the comings and goings of servants and the unstoppable march of modern life. Reissued as part of Renard’s accessible series of Stein’s work, this is the perfect edition for lovers of the Modernist icon’s work, and a new generation that is just as fascinated by crime and detection.

‘I am fond of paintings, furniture, tapestry, houses and flowers and even vegetables and fruit trees. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.’ First published in 1933 at the height of Stein’s popularity and literary prowess, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is one of the most avant-garde pieces of non-fiction of the last century. Taking as its form that of ‘autobiography’, told through the eyes of her life partner Toklas, Stein’s book provoked wild debate, and was pored over for its representations of the elite Paris art scene. Charting Toklas’s early life in San Francisco, life in Paris with Stein and the war years spent in Spain, this is not only a wildly important piece of early LGBTQ+ literature, but, much like Woolf’s Orlando, which perhaps inspired it, this is Modernism at its finest.

One of the classic texts on Picasso, republished with full illustration as originally conceived. Gertrude Stein was not only one of Picasso's earliest patrons, she was also one of the seminal writers of the 20th century, attempting to make a revolution in prose to rival Picasso's in painting.

‘Sometimes men are kissing. Men are sometimes kissing and sometimes drinking. Men are sometimes kissing one another…’ One of the foremost writers of the twentieth century, Gertrude Stein was marked for her ground-breaking experimental prose and extraordinary friendship group alike, and her works stand as a monument in the Modernist era. In more recent years Stein has been held up as a queer icon, as she lived openly with her life partner Alice B. Toklas and wrote of queer relationships at a time when this was strictly taboo. While some of Stein’s queer works made it into print in her lifetime, including The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, much of her more daring early queer stories only saw the light of day after her death, when Yale set to publishing her complete works. Now that ‘The love that dare not speak its name’ may be bolder, this collection aims to restore Stein’s short, queer works to the canon, and to burnish her status as an early queer icon.

90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books'All Frenchmen know you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three and that civilisation comes upon you by contact with an older woman, by revolution, by army discipline, by any escape or any subjection, and then you are civilised and life goes on normally in a latin way.' Gertrude Stein’s Paris France, published in 1940 on the day Paris fell to Nazi Germany, is a witty account of Stein’s life in France, and the perfect introduction to her work.

Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives: Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena" offers a compelling glimpse into the lives of working-class women in the early 20th century. This collection of short stories, considered an important work of modernist literature, explores the everyday experiences of women in domestic service. Stein's distinctive and evocative prose captures the nuances of their lives, loves, and struggles. "Three Lives" presents portraits of distinct individuals, each facing unique challenges within the constraints of their social roles. The stories delve into themes of womanhood, labor, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. With subtle humor and profound insight, Stein's work provides a valuable perspective on a pivotal era. This edition offers a carefully prepared republication of a classic text.This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.