Gertrude Stein February 3, — July 27, was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania now part of Pittsburgh , and raised in Oakland, California , [ 1 ] Stein moved to Paris in , and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon , where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso , Ernest Hemingway , F.
Toklas , written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas , her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. Her books include Q. Her activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary. German and English were spoken in their home.
When Stein was three years old, she and her family moved to Vienna , and then Paris. Accompanied by governesses and tutors, the Steins endeavored to imbue their children with the cultured sensibilities of European history and life.
Stein found formal schooling in Oakland unstimulating, [ 18 ] but she often read Shakespeare , Wordsworth , Scott , Burns , Smollett , Fielding , and more.
When Stein was 14 years old, her mother died. Three years later, her father died as well. Stein's eldest brother, Michael Stein, age 26, [ 13 ] then took over the family business holdings, moved his four siblings to San Francisco, [ 19 ] where he now was a director of the Market Street Cable Railway Company , and in arranged for Gertrude and another sister, Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore.
