The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, book by Gertrude Stein, written in the voice of her lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas. Published in 1933, the work ostensibly contains Toklas’s first-person account not of her own life but of Stein’s, written from Toklas’s viewpoint and replete with Toklas’s sensibilities, observations, and mannerisms. The work was originally published in an abridged version in The Atlantic Monthly magazine.

The book describes the life led by Toklas and Stein in Paris, including their at homes with such artists, literary lions, and intellectuals as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. While Stein exchanges ideas with men of genius, Toklas sits with their wives. Aside from its portrait of their lives, the book’s droll premise, masterful execution, and witty insights concerning the writers and artists then living in France make clear Stein’s ability to write for a general public.