Gertrude Stein, Hostess of the Parisian Literary Salon

by Lauren Owen

In 1874 the ground was fertile for Gertrude Stein to become a woman of virile thoughts even in her youth. After having been born in a small industrial town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, little Gertrude Stein took to a life abroad at age one--crawling, then walking in Vienna, America, and elsewhere in Europe, under the care of her capricious, travel-happy father, her mother, and her four siblings.

Her first language was German. Then she learned French. In Baltimore at the age of five, she began to speak English, which was the language she favored in regards to writing or r...