Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American who lived in Paris most of her life. She was an experimental writer. She wrote stream of conscious pieces, novels, plays and poems. The book that launched her career into the mainstream was The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas, which despite the title was her autobiography. It became a bestseller. Stein’s book Q.E.D was one of the first books about coming out as a lesbian that was published after her death. She did not hide that she was a masculine woman.

Stein held weekly Saturday night salons in Paris with the premier artists of the time that “brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art.”, quote from here. The guests often included Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce and Henri Matisse. She collected modern paintings, especially cubist paintings.

Alice B. Tolkas, a writer, was her life partner, Hemingway referred to her often as Stein’s wife.  One of Stein’s most famous quotes is “A rose is a rose is a rose.”