Gertrude Stein

Writer

Gertrude Stein travelled the the U.S. and Europe as a child, and studied under philosopher William James at Radcliffe College. She moved to France in 1904 and found herself in the center of a crowd of artists that included Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Thornton Wilder. Although Stein had been writing plays, prose and poetry for years, she was unknown as a writer until the 1933 publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, named after her companion of many years.

Extra credit: Stein was known for using repetition in her writing; her often-quoted line "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" is from Sacred Emily (1913).

Stein is sometimes compared to another author surrounded by artists, Virginia Woolf.