In 1946, the artist Francis Rose completed a series of drawings to be included in The Gertrude Stein First Reader & Three Plays, by Gertrude Stein, which was first published in 1946. Three of these sketches are preserved in the Robert A. Wilson collection of Gertrude Stein materials at Johns Hopkins University. Two of these … Continue reading Illuminating Illustrations: Francis Rose and Gertrude Stein
Q.E.D. – Questions Ever Deferred
During Gertrude Stein's career, she had early difficulties getting published, leaving several of her works to be published posthumously. One of the earliest pieces she wrote after leaving medical school faced this fate, a text she titled “Q.E.D.,” which she seems to have placed in a drawer after completion and then forgotten. As described in The … Continue reading Q.E.D. – Questions Ever Deferred
The Invisible Collaboration Behind the Plain Edition
My sister recently published a novel and has spent the last two years learning the skills required for self-publication: editing, formatting, marketing, and more. After witnessing my sister’s escapades, I was interested in exploring Gertrude Stein’s own experiences with publishing her works. Between the years 1931 and 1933, Stein published five books with her partner … Continue reading The Invisible Collaboration Behind the Plain Edition
Concurrent Geniuses: Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and the Interests of Friendship
Gertrude Stein was many things: a novelist, poet, playwright, ambulance driver, publisher, and art collector. Most know her today as an eccentric lesbian who wrote eccentric books and kept eccentric company. Most do not know how deeply intertwined these aspects of her life were. Her friends, her writing, her art collecting, and her business were … Continue reading Concurrent Geniuses: Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and the Interests of Friendship
How Gertrude Stein and Other Female Artists Were Able to Find a Publishing Platform After WWI
While exploring Gertrude Stein’s published works in the Robert A. Wilson collection, I found that Stein was featured in four issues of Broom: An International Magazine Of The Arts. Three of these issues contain parts of Stein’s “If You Had Three Husbands”, published throughout January, April, and June of 1922. In addition, Broom published Stein’s … Continue reading How Gertrude Stein and Other Female Artists Were Able to Find a Publishing Platform After WWI
Friends Writing Across an Ocean
Throughout her life, Gertrude Stein had several close friends who doubled as colleagues within the modernist art and literary movement. Mabel Dodge Luhan, a fellow American writer and a famous author in her own right, became a friend of Stein’s during a brief visit to 27 rue de Fleurus in the spring of 1911. Their … Continue reading Friends Writing Across an Ocean
A Partially Preserved Night at the Opera
Figure 1. Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, and Harold McCormick at the opening of Four Saints in Three Acts, performed by the Chicago Opera Company, November 7, 1934. Unknown photographer for the Chicago American newspaper. Robert A. Wilson Collection, Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University. In 1934, Gertrude Stein visited America for the first time in … Continue reading A Partially Preserved Night at the Opera
“Saving the Sentence”: How to Write like Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein is perhaps best known for three things: her flair as an art collector, her authorship, and the company she kept. This set of page proofs from the Robert A. Wilson Collection of Gertrude Stein Materials at Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries exemplifies who Gertrude Stein was as an author: a force of nature. … Continue reading “Saving the Sentence”: How to Write like Gertrude Stein
19 Years in 5 Letters: Mabel Foote Weeks’s Letters to Gertrude Stein
Interesting insights into Gertrude Stein’s life and later reception are apparent in five carbon copies of letters Mabel Foote Weeks wrote to Stein between 1901 and 1920. Weeks met Stein when the two attended Radcliffe College (then called the Harvard Annex). Though Weeks graduated in 1894, she and Stein kept in touch after Stein moved … Continue reading 19 Years in 5 Letters: Mabel Foote Weeks’s Letters to Gertrude Stein
CURATING GERTRUDE STEIN 