The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Gertrude Stein
- First Published: 1933
- Type of Work: Autobiography
- Time of Work: The first three decades of the twentieth century
- Setting: Paris
- Principal Characters: Gertrude Stein, Leo Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Thorton Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Biography
- Subjects: Homosexuality or homosexuals, Authors or writers, Art or artists, Social life, Paris, 1920’s, Lesbianism or lesbians, World War I, Painting or painters, Parties
- Locales: Paris, France, England, Nimes, France
Form and Content
For years, Gertrude Stein nagged Alice B. Toklas, her lifelong companion, to write her autobiography. When Toklas did not, Stein did it for her. The format of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is deceptively simple. Its seven chapters—ranging in length from the three pages of chapter 1, “Before I Came to Paris,” to the forty-nine pages of chapter 6, “The War” (World War I), or the fifty-nine pages of chapter 7, “After the War: 1919-1932”—detail the artistic development of Gertrude Stein and only incidentally the life of Alice B....
[The entire page is 1981 words long]
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