born Feb. 3, 1874, Allegheny City, Pa., U.S.
died July 27, 1946, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
U.S. avant-garde writer.
Born to a wealthy family, Stein studied at Radcliffe College before moving to Paris, where from 1909 she lived with her companion Alice B. Toklas (18771967). Their home was a salon for leading artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , Georges Braque , Sherwood Anderson , and Ernest Hemingway . An early supporter of Cubism , she tried to parallel its theories in her work, including the poetry volume Tender Buttons (1914). Her prose was characterized by a unique style employing repetition, fragmentation, and use of the continuous present, especially in the immense novel The Making of Americans (written 190611, published 1928). Her only book to reach a wide public was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), actually Stein's own autobiography. Her other works include Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) and The Mother of Us All (1947), opera librettos scored by Virgil Thomson .