Gertrude and Alice

Gertrude Stein and Alice Babette Toklas met on September 8, 1907, in Paris, and remained together from that day until Gertrude's death in 1946. They became a legendary couple, photographed by Stieglitz, Man Ray & Cecil Beaton, painted by Picasso, and written about in the works of Hemingway, Paul Bowles and Sylvia Beach. Gertrude and Alice is the highly acclaimed story of their remarkable life together. From letters, memoirs and their published writings and with rich illustrations, Whitbread Award-winner Diana Souhami brings their characters, beliefs,and achievements vividly to life: "so emphatically and uncompromisingly themselves, that the world could do nothing less than accept them as they were."

Gertrude Stein and Alice Babette Toklas met on September 8, 1907, in Paris, and remained together from that day until Gertrude's death in 1946. They became a legendary couple, photographed by Stieglitz, Man Ray & Cecil Beaton, painted by Picasso, and written about in the works of Hemingway, Paul Bowles and Sylvia Beach. Gertrude and Alice is the highly acclaimed story of their remarkable life together. From letters, memoirs and their published writings and with rich illustrations, Whitbread Award-winner Diana Souhami brings their characters, beliefs,and achievements vividly to life: "so emphatically and uncompromisingly themselves, that the world could do nothing less than accept them as they were."

Library Journal

Though, as Souhami admits, this book gives no new insight into the work of Gertrude Stein, it does illuminate Stein's personal and intimate life in a way that the modernist's writings don't always do. Drawing from letters, memoirs, archival material, and published writings by and about Gertrude Stein and her confidante, lover, and assistant, Alice B. Toklas, Souhami essentially sketches a portrait of the unconventional relationship between the two California expatriates in Paris. From the time they met in 1907 until Stein's death in 1946, they lived as a truly committed couple, Gertrude being the more famous one, or the "genius," as Alice unquestionably believed. Previously published in 1991 in London, this informative and entertaining biography is possibly the first instance, now that the public presentation of lesbianism tends to be more accepted, in which the whole story of Gertrude and Alice "comes out." Highly recommended for literary collections in all academic and public libraries.--Ali Houissa, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Diana Souhami is the author of Selkirk's Island, for which she won the Whitbread Biography Award, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall, for which she won the Lambda Literary Award, Coconut Chaos, Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter, Greta and Cecil, and Gluck: Her Biography. She lives in London.