The Gertrude Stein Reader: The Great American Pioneer of Avant-Garde Letters

Richard Kostelanetz has authored over 40 books of criticism of contemporary music and the arts. He is noted as one of the first critics to recognize uhe importance of John Cage, and has written and collected several books on Cage and his work

Famous writer Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, PA and was educated at Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins medical school. Stein wrote Three Lives, The Making of Americans, and Tender Buttons, all of which were considered difficult for the average reader. She is most famous for her opera Four Saints in Three Acts and The show more Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which was actually an autobiography of Stein herself. With her companion Alice B. Toklas, Stein received the French government's Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise for theory work with the American fund for French Wounded in World War I. Gertrude Stein died in Neuilly-ser-Seine, France on July 27, 1946. (Bowker Author Biography) show less