![]() ![]() Her early publication experiences had been marked by frustration and misunderstanding. ![]() Stein self-published by necessity, but gaining power over the physical production of her books had a significant positive by-product. The Plain Edition books were the first over which she could exercise significant control. Trading a painting for “an Edition,” she hoped, might shift public attention away from her personality and toward her writing. Having gained notoriety as an art collector and the charismatic hostess of the salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, Stein nonetheless continued to feel profound frustration as her writing, which she considered her most important work, was repeatedly rejected by major publishers and ridiculed in the popular press. The sale yielded cash and the promise that Stein might leverage one kind of sociocultural capital to acquire another. The couple funded their venture by selling one, and maybe more, of their beloved Picassos. A word with the letters ycal how to#While her writing is now recognized as among the most innovative in the twentieth century, Stein’s paraliterary work in book design and publishing has gone largely unexamined.īetween 19 the Plain Edition released five books: Lucy Church Amiably (1930), Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded (1931), How to Write (1931), Operas and Plays (1932), and Matisse, Picasso & Gertrude Stein (1933). Toklas) occasioned drafts and correspondence that show Stein engaging with the book as a material object. Her three-year career as copublisher of the Plain Edition (with her partner Alice B. From then until Brewsie and Willie, the last titlereleased before Stein’s death in 1946, she created, alongside a remarkable body of literature, a record of how she saw her writing into public circulation. The first book Stein saw into print, Three Lives, appeared at her own expense through the vanity publisher Grafton Press in 1909. ![]() He can do me as cheaply and as simply as he likes but I would so like to be done.” Fantasies of “being done” aside, it is in fact Stein’s persistent self-assertion that secured what limited publishing opportunities she had before the popular success of The Autobiography of Alice B. In 1916, seven years after her first book publication, forty-two-year-old Gertrude Stein fantasized about ways to see more of her work into print. She exclaimed in a letter to Carl Van Vechten, “where oh where is the man to publish me in series. Sarah Stone (center) at Kelly Writers House, April 2013. ![]()
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