Gertrude Stein, American writer, 1874-1946

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. She moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art would meet. In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas", written in the voice of her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into the limelight of mainstream attention. The quote "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" from her 1922 poem "Sacred Emily" has become widely known.