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Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.

Early Life

Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born on February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (merged with Pittsburgh in 1907)to upper-class German Jewish parents, Daniel and Amelia Stein. Her father was a railroad executive whose investments in streetcar lines and real estate made the family wealthy.

When Gertrude was three years old she and her family moved to Vienna and then Paris. They returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school.

Her mother died in 1888, and her father in 1891. Michael, her eldest brother, took over the family business holdings. He arranged for Gertrude, and another sister, Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore after the deaths of their parents. In 1892, she lived with her uncle David Bachrach.

In Baltimore, Stein met Claribel Cone and Etta Cone, who held Saturday evening salons which she would later emulate in Paris. The Cones shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it, and modeled a domestic division of labor that Stein would replicate in her relationship with Alice B. Toklas.

Stein attended Radcliffe College from 1893 to 1897, and was a student of psychologist William James. With James's supervision, Stein and another student, Leon Mendez Solomons, performed experiments on ..