"Largely to amuse herself, [ Gertrude Stein ] wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1932...using as a sounding board her companion Miss Toklas, who had been with her for twenty-five years. It has been said that the writing takes on very much Miss Toklas' conversational style, and while this is true the style is still a variant of Miss Stein's conversation style. ...She usually insisted that writing is an entirely different thing from talking, and it is part of the miracle of this little scheme of objectification that she could by way of imitating Miss Toklas put in writing something of her own beautiful conversation. So that, aside from making a real present of her past, she created a figure of herself, established an identity a twin, a Doppelganger.... The book is full of the most lucid and shapely anecdotes, told in a purer and more closely fitting prose... than even Gide or Hemingway have ever commanded ...." <br>-- Donald Sutherland <br>..." The record of nearly thirty years of life in a fantastically changing Paris and else where -- a life passed in the most stimulating and important society." <br>-- Louis Bromfield <br>..." One of the richest, wittiest, and most irreverent [biographies] ever written." <br>-- William Troy <p>"From the Trade Paperback edition.

A book that is going to cause some annoyance and much discussion. Is Alice B. Toklas a real person? Yes, she is, very much so, secretary and companion and close friend of Certrude Stein for many years. Why the title? Because Alice Toklas was always threatening to write her autobiography, which, Gertrude Stein knew, would in essence be her biography, based on a close intimacy. When the writing was postponed repeatedly, Gertrude Stein announced that she would do it herself. This is the result. This the title. Explain it to your customers if you can. The text is really Gertrude Stein's autobiography, though it gives a delightful background of Alice Toklas, a background of sympathy, cooperation, friendship, and life made up of little things such as cooking and sewing, and making the wheels go round. As a biography of Gertrude it is fascinating. One gots a vivid swift picture of a childhood in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and in Europe; of college days at Radcliffe and at Johns Hopkins studying medicine. After 1907 she lived with her brother in Paris and one meets Piccasso, Matisse, Juan Cris - the moderns who were trying to make the world see what they saw. And there were many from the writing world, too, Sherwood Anderson, Van Vechten and others. She was always writing, always worried because the world did not understand her. So lucid and sympathetic a study is this, that one feels one could go back to her writings and understand them now. There is no affectation here, none of the stream of consciousness method. Intensely interesting, and should have more than a moderate sale. (Kirkus Reviews)