Back Writings 1932–1946

Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932–1946

Edited by Catherine Stimpson and Harriet Chessman

“The richness of this volume alone justifies Stein’s recognition, at last, as a ‘classic’ of American literature.”— The Boston Globe

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

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This Library of America volume, along with its companion, presents a full-scale gathering of the achievement of Gertrude Stein, the most radical innovator in 20th-century literature. With her fresh, irreverent approach to syntax and meaning itself, she proposed nothing less than a reinvention of language from the ground up. From her home in Paris she conducted the most famous salon of modern times, tirelessly promoting modernism in all the arts and holding court for an audience that included the foremost creative figures of her day.

This second volume includes works written between 1932 and her death in 1946, years in which she gained a wider readership and made a triumphant return to the United States as a lecturer, but chose ultimately to remain in France during World War II. It opens with the poetic sequence Stanzas in Meditation (complete text published posthumously in 1946), perhaps Stein’s most austere and rigorous experiment in linguistic abstraction. In Lectures in America (1935) and The Geographical History of America (1936), she made the most of her newfound status as a public figure, exploring with brilliance and humor the philosophical implications of her writings, the difference between English and American literature, the importance of space in American culture, and much else. Picasso (1938) is a book-length study of the painter who was one of her closest associates, and whose work was a lifelong inspiration for her.

Stein’s playfulness is given full scope in the children’s book The World is Round (1939) and in Ida (1941), an enchanting exercise in pure verbal invention. The play Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (written 1938, published 1949) and the opera The Mother of Us All (1947), inspired by the life of women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, give new twists to legendary and historical figures, while “Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters” (1946) pays tribute to the melodramas that delighted Stein in her childhood. In her last major work, Brewsie and Willie (1946), a striking stylistic departure, she pays homage to the American soldiers she came to know after the liberation of France with a remarkable evocation of their speech and aspirations.

Catharine R. Stimpson and Harriet Chessman, volume editors, are Dean of the New York University School of Arts and Sciences and the author of Someone Not Really Her Mother, respectively.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

Stanzas in Meditation

Henry James

Lectures in America

Narration: Lecture 3

What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them

The Geographical History of America or The Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind

What Does She See When She Shuts Her Eyes

Picasso

The World Is Round

Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights

Ida

Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters

Brewsie and Willie

The Mother of Us All

Reflections on the Atomic Bomb

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ISBN: 978-1-88301141-3 844 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 100 Library of America Series

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