Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein, the American author known for her influence on artists and writers of the twentieth century, was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1874. She studied at Radcliffe College and at Johns Hopkins medical school before moving to Paris in 1903, where she began writing. While living in Paris, Stein supported painters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. After World War I, her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus was frequented by American expatriate writers Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thornton Wilder. Stein’s own writings include “Three Lives” (1909); “Tender Buttons” (1914), a collection of poetry influenced by Cubism; “The Making of Americans” (1925); “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” (1933); “Brewsie and Willie” (1946); and the librettos for two operas, “Four Saints in Three Acts” (1934) and “The Mother of Us All” (1947). She died in 1946 in Paris.