Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature

Abstract

The identity of Gertrude Stein -high-modernist author, Paris salon-hostess and American celebrity -was the subject of much speculation throughout her career, especially in the wake of her bestselling volume The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). While numerous massmedia journalists quoted her and speculated about her writing or her personality, and while her publisher would label her 'the publicity hound of the world', Stein herself would retreat inward, suggesting that as others increasingly recognized her, 'Well you see I did not know myself […] So many people knowing me I was I no longer.' 1 This tension between the private Stein and the public Stein -that 'there are two Steins', as a photograph she was sent would lead her to observe -provides the focus for a number of studies of her role in modernist culture both as author and celebrity. 2