Three Lives (Collins Classics)

Description

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet, and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.' In Bridgepoint, USA, people get trapped into lives they didn't choose, without means of escape: Anna, a sweet but intimidating German housemaid; Melanctha, a troubled young woman whose passion threatens to tear her apart; and Lena, a timid girl bullied into work and marriage. In this ground-breaking collection, Stein depicts the interior lives of these women, struggling to find happiness in an unkind world. Gertrude Stein was a pioneering figurehead of Modernism, and a mentor to writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written in 1909, Three Lives captures the artistic styles of Picasso, Cezanne and Matisse, and uses them to create heart-breaking portraits of working-class women.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was born in Pittsburgh of a prosperous German-Jewish family. She was educated in France and the USA, worked under the pioneering psychologist William James and later studied medicine. With her brother Leo she was an important patron of the arts, acquiring pictures by many contemporary artists, most famously Picasso, while her home became a popular meeting place for writers and painters from Matisse to Hemingway. Her books include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, and The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas."