Toklas—the true power behind the throne.

The American book tour that catapulted Gertrude Stein from quirky artist to a household name. In 1933, experimental writer and longtime expatriate Gertrude Stein skyrocketed to overnight fame with the publication of an unlikely best seller, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Pantomiming the voice of her partner Alice, The Autobiography was actually Gertrude's work. But whoever the real author was, the uncharacteristically lucid and readable book won over the hearts of thousands of Americans, whose clamor to meet Gertrude and Alice in person convinced them to return to America for the first time in thirty years from their self-imposed exile in France. For more than six months, Gertrude and Alice crisscrossed America, from New England to California, from Minnesota to Texas, stopping at thirty-seven different cities along the way. They had tea with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, attended a star-studded dinner party at Charlie Chaplin's home in Beverly Hills, enjoyed fifty-yard-line seats at the annual Yale-Dartmouth football game, and rode along with a homicide detective through the streets of Chicago. They met with the Raven Society in Edgar Allan Poe's old room at the University of Virginia, toured notable Civil War battlefields, and ate Oysters Rockefeller for the first time at Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans. Everywhere they went, they were treated like everyone's favorite maiden aunts—colorful, eccentric, and eminently quotable. In Gertrude Stein Has Arrived, noted literary biographer Roy Morris Jr. recounts with characteristic energy and wit the couple's rollicking tour, revealing how—much to their surprise—they rediscovered their American roots after three decades of living abroad. Entertaining and sympathetic, this clear-eyed account captures Gertrude Stein for the larger-than-life legend she was and shows the unique relationship she had with her indefatigable companion, Alice B. Toklas—the true power behind the throne.

Back in 1936, Thornton Wilder had warned Gertrude Stein to get her unpublished manuscripts into the safekeeping of the Yale Library because of the danger of another world war's breaking out on French soil. Charmed by the notion that all her work was to be safely harbor-ed for later publication and study, Gertrude packed several cases of manuscripts, letters and miscellany and sent them off. The packing was done with characteristic Steinian abandon: neatly piled manuscripts were dumped into crates, and correspond-ence, carefully alphabetized and filed at the end of each year by Gertrude's amanuensis, Alice Toklas, was pulled out in drawerfuls and overturned into the crates. Finally, all the scraps of paper that Gertrude never threw away, budget lists, garage attendants' instructions about the Fords she owned during the 10's and 20's ("regardez le carburetor"), forgotten old dentist's bills, were tossed in, too. Alice re-monstrated about their inclusion, but Gertrude used every hoarder's excuse: "You can never tell whether some laundry list might not be the most important thing." Two packages in brown wrapping paper at the bottom of the armoire, lying among chunks of manuscript of her novel, The Making of Americans, fell into the crates along with all the other papers...

Matched only by Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Paris France is a "fresh and sagacious" (The New Yorker) classic of prewar France and its unforgettable literary eminences. Celebrated for her innovative literary bravura, Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) settled into a bustling Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, never again to return to her native America. While in Paris, she not only surrounded herself with—and tirelessly championed the careers of—a remarkable group of young expatriate artists but also solidified herself as "one of the most controversial figures of American letters" (New York Times). In Paris France (1940)—published here with a new introduction from Adam Gopnik—Stein unites her childhood memories of Paris with her observations about everything from art and war to love and cooking. The result is an unforgettable glimpse into a bygone era, one on the brink of revolutionary change.

Based on the life of Gertrude Stein during her Paris years. Her life in France crossed paths with such famous people of the art and literary world...Picasso, Hemingway, Matisse, Apollonaire Guillaume and her long time companion Alice B. Toklas and many others.

This classic children’s book is “a treasure trove for admirers of [Stein’s] singular vision and Hurd’s always charming artwork” (Publishers Weekly). Written in her unique prose style, Gertrude Stein’s The World Is Round chronicles the adventures of a young girl named Rose—a whimsical tale that delights in wordplay and sound while exploring the ideas of personal identity and individuality. This volume replicates the original 1939 edition, including all of Clement Hurd’s original blue-and-white art printed on the rose-pink paper that Stein insisted upon. Also featured here are two essays that provide an inside view to the making of the book. The first, a foreword by Clement Hurd’s son, author and illustrator Thacher Hurd, includes previously unpublished photographs and sheds light on a creative family life in Vermont, where his father and mother, author Edith Thacher Hurd, often collaborated on children’s books. The second essay, an afterword by Edith Thacher Hurd, takes readers behind the scenes of the making of The World Is Round, including the numerous letters exchanged between Hurd and Stein as well as images of Stein with the real-life Rose and her white poodle, Love. “The perfect mix of Gertrude Stein’s painterly words and Clement Hurd’s elegant illustrations make The World Is Round an unforgettable treasure.” —Todd Oldham “a book. a beautiful book. arrived. it is pink and it is smart and it is beautiful. bring that book over here so i can look at it. would you like some tea?” —Maira Kalman