Broadly Queer and Specifically Gay: The Celebrity and Career of Gertrude Stein

Abstract

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein was published in 1933, an unpromising year for a testimonial to a lesbian partnership: a year that saw the height of the worldwide Great Depression, the ascendance of the Nazis in Europe, and the consolidation of the restriction of personal freedom that followed the 1920s. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (hereafter The Autobiography) links Stein and her partner Toklas with its title and byline, offers photographs of the women at home, relates decades of their domestic life, and clarifies the women’s sexuality without ever naming it. Nonetheless, the memoir quickly became not only an international bestseller but also a cultural phenomenon. Gertrude Stein, for years an embodiment of the avant-garde if not the lunatic fringe, now held the cover of Time magazine, and her memoir was a main selection of the Literary Guild, a popular book-of-the-month club for middlebrow subscribers who trusted the Guild to provide them with trendy yet respectable contemporary books. What could be more mainstream?