Scroll To Top
Books

Work Offers New Perspective on Stein-Toklas Relationship

Work Offers New Perspective on Stein-Toklas Relationship

Stein_toklasx390_0
trudestress
Support The Advocate
LGBTQ+ stories are more important than ever. Join us in fighting for our future. Support our journalism.

Long after their deaths, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas remain one of the world's most celebrated lesbian couples, but a new edition of a Stein work makes clear that like others, they had their problems.

Yale University Press's new edition of the long poem Stanzas in Meditation, released this week, "reveals the fraught and jealous relationship" between Stein and Toklas, Publishers Weekly reports. Toklas, who was Stein's editor as well as her lover, was upset by references to Stein's former love interest May Bookstaver in the original manuscript and insisted the author change them. The new release, edited by Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina, includes the original text as well as a guide to the differences in various versions of the work, which was first published in the 1950s.

The press is also bringing out a new edition of Stein's novel Ida, about the impact of fame on a woman's life, and it includes commentary by editor Logan Esdale plus archival materials on the novel's development and its reception by critics when it came out in 1941.

These two books will "let readers experience the full extent of Stein's innovations and appreciate their relation to both private and public dimensions of another of her great creative works, her literary career itself," Hollister and Setina wrote in an email to Publishers Weekly.

trudestress
The Advocates with Sonia BaghdadyOut / Advocate Magazine - Jonathan Groff & Wayne Brady

From our Sponsors

Most Popular

Latest Stories

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.
Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.