The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

STEIN, Gertrude.

$4,800.00

Item Number: 118746

New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1933.

First edition of Gertrude Stein’s most famous work; one of the richest biographies ever written. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper with a full page inscription, “For Amelia Henry Reinhardt, …it was in Oakland which is not near San Fernando and not at Pleasant Hill Gertrude Stein.” The recipient, Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt, was an American educator, activist, and prominent member and leader of numerous organizations. She was active in numerous local, national, and international organizations, lecturing and writing on topics including international cooperation, suffrage, and women’s rights and was appointed president of Mills College in Oakland, California (the second oldest women’s college on the West Coast) and the American Association of University Women. In near fine condition. With Reinhardt’s bookplate to the pastedown featuring a portrait of Dante.

Largely to amuse herself, Gertrude Stein wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1932...using as a sounding board her companion Miss Toklas, who had been with her for twenty-five years. It has been said that the writing takes on very much Miss Toklas' conversational style, and while this is true the style is still a variant of Miss Stein's conversation style. ...She usually insisted that writing is an entirely different thing from talking, and it is part of the miracle of this little scheme of objectification that she could by way of imitating Miss Toklas put in writing something of her own beautiful conversation. So that, aside from making a real present of her past, she created a figure of herself, established an identity a twin, a Doppelganger.... The book is full of the most lucid and shapely anecdotes, told in a purer and more closely fitting prose... than even Gide or Hemingway have ever commanded" (Donald Sutherland). It was listed by Modern Library as one of the greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.