Everybody Who Was Anybody - A Biography of Gertrude Stein

London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975. A Fine unmarked copy with near Fine dustjacket which is not price clipped. A large format volume of xii + 244 pages. 100 black and white illustrations, 8 colour plates. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) soon became aware that she was destined to 'create the twentieth century'. Brought up in Europe and the new frontier state of California, Gertrude never lost the sense of being a pioneer. In 1903 she moved to Paris and two years later bought her first Matisse, the notorious Femme au Chapeau, the most ridiculed work of the scandalous 'Fauve' exhibition. In 1905 Gertrude also met and began to buy the work of Picasso. With his portrait of her, a work seminal in the development of Cubism, and with her own writing of Three Lives, both in 1906, Gertrude Stein began to take her place at the centre of a group of artists and writers whose works were among the most important of the century. By the outbreak of World War I Gertrude, with her brothers Leo and Michael, had amassed the most important collection of modern art in the world. After the war Gertrude became mentor to several of the best known American writers, among them Ernest Hemngway. By the time of her death, Gertrude Stein had become a legend - she had been painted, sculpted and photographed by the most famous artists of her time. Her apartments at rue de Fleurus, and later at rue Christine, were landmarks in Paris. The book tells the story of the public personality and the deeply serious writer behind. It recounts the development and significance of her complex relationship with her brother Leo, with Alice B. Toklas and with Picasso, as well as her artistic relationships with the Cubists and the writers of the Lost Generation and her profoundly symbolic relationship with America, with France, with 'inside and outside reality', with personality and the nature of genius. PLEASE NOTE: A LARGE HEAVY VOLUME OF 0.95 KILO UNPACKED WEIGHT WHICH MAY REQUIRE ADDITIONAL SHIPPING COST 16. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Near Fine. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.