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xxii, 426 pages. Edited by Edward Burns. Introduction by Gilbert A. Harrison. Includes List of Illustrations (38, in black and white); Manuscript Locations, "On Collecting the Letters" by Edward Burns, and Index. Some wear and small chips to dust jacket spine. These letters were written between 1946 and 1966. Alice Babette Toklas (April 30, 1877 - March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein. Five months after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Toklas left the city and moved to Paris. On September 8, 1907, the day after she arrived in Paris, she met Gertrude Stein. This marked the beginning of a relationship which lasted for nearly four decades, ending in 1946 with Stein's death. Together they hosted a salon in the home they shared at 27 rue de Fleurus that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson; and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque. Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until the publication by Stein of Toklas' "memoirs" in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's best-selling book. W. G. Rogers wrote in his memoir of the couple, published in 1946, that Toklas "was a little stooped, somewhat retiring and self-effacing. She doesn't sit in a chair, she hides in it; she doesn't look at you, but up at you; she is always standing just half a step outside the circle. She gives the appearance, in short, not of a drudge, but of a poor relation, someone invited to the wedding but not to the wedding feast."[4] James Merrill wrote that before meeting Toklas "one knew about the tiny stature, the sandals, the mustache, the eyes," but he had not anticipated "the enchantment of her speaking voice-like a viola at dusk."[5] Toklas and Stein remained a couple until Stein's death in 194 On tissue-thin paper in a tiny, often undecipherable hand, Alice Toklas described her daily life in Paris in absorbing detail, like a latter-day Madame de Sévigné. Here are shrewd, witty observations on some of the most interesting artists, musicians, and writers of the twentieth century: Thornton Wilder, Carl Van Vechten, Edith Sitwell, Anita Loos, Cecil Beaton, Janet Flanner, Bennett Cerf, among others. There are stories about Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Juan Gris, Cocteau, and Sartre--all revealing a sharp eye that was as much a part of Alice as her devotion to Gertrude and her passion for recipes and gardening. In preparing this collection, the editor has chosen letters of biographical, literary, and artistic significance to an understanding of Gertrude Stein and her circle, letters illustrating the catholicity of Alice Toklas's friendships and the quality of her gifts, and letters that simply delight for their gossip.
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