Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California. After studying psychology at Radcliffe and medicine at Johns Hopkins, she moved to Paris in 1903, where she became a patron and collector of modern art, hosting a salon that included Picasso, Matisse, and Hemingway. Her first major work, Three Lives (1909), used a repetitive, rhythmic style to explore the lives of working-class women, breaking from conventional narrative. Stein is best known for The Making of Americans and the poetic Tender Buttons, as well as her memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Her playful, abstract approach to language and grammar influenced generations of writers and remains a touchstone of literary modernism.