Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, to a wealthy family of German Jewish descent, although she makes no mention of her Jewish origins in The Autobiography. She traveled to Europe in her early youth before returning to the United States to complete her education. She studied at Radcliffe College under William James and, being interested in psychology, pursued a medical degree at Johns Hopkins University. However, Stein dropped out and in 1903 made her home in Paris, where she began her life as a writer and art collector. She was an instrumental tastemaker, challenging herself to look beyond conventional beauty and seek the radical avant-garde art she found on the premises of the surly dealer Ambroise Vollard. Always on the lookout for a new painter or artist, Stein was an early collector and encourager of the work of Matisse and Picasso.

Where her own writing was concerned, Stein was experimental, seeking to challenge conventional syntax and to dispense with the 19th-century literary tradition’s excessive use of metaphor and emotion. Instead, like other Modernist writers, Stein sought a combination of descriptive precision and a

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