Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company [Paperback]

James R. Mellow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2003

Avant-garde Paris comes to life in this “meticulous and loving reconstruction of the period” (The New York Times Book Review)

On almost every Saturday of the first half of the twentieth century, Gertrude Stein would open her door to the likes of Picasso and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Cocteau and Apollinaire, welcoming them into a salon alive with vivid avant-garde paintings and sparkling intellectual conversation. In Charmed Circle, James R. Mellow has re-created this fascinating world and the complex woman who dominated it. His engaging narrative illuminates Stein’s writing—now celebrated along with the work of such literary giants as Joyce and Woolf—including her difficult early periods, which adapted cubism and abstraction to the written word. Rich with detail and insight, it conveys both the serene rhythms of daily life with her devoted partner, Alice B. Toklas, and the radical pulse and dramatic upheavals of her exciting era.

Spanning the years from 1903, when Stein first arrived in Paris, to her final days at the end of the Second World War, Charmed Circle is a penetrating and lively account of a writer at the heart of modernity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A rich and compelling portrait of an extraordinary personage and a mural of the people in her life. She has been given a biographer worthy of her.” —Los Angeles Times

“Entertaining and comprehensive . . . a delightful book.” —The New Yorker

About the Author

James R. Mellow was the author of two other highly acclaimed biographies, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Times, which won the American Book Award for biography in 1983, and Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, as well as Walker Evans, an unfinished biography that was published posthumously. A regular reviewer for The New York Times, he died in 1997.

Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805073515
• ISBN-13: 978-0805073515
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gertrude, Alice and the gang!, April 17, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company (Paperback)

This book gives one of the best overviews of Gertrude Stein and her crowd! When it first came out almost 30 years ago, I read it and have been hooked on Stein and Alice and Picasso and Hemingway and Anderson and Wilder and on and on. Mellow provides very detailed information about the lives of all these greats and some have criticized him for his almost gossipy, "Entertainment Tonight" style. But what better way to feel a part of this circle of extraordinary people? Had more high school and college English and Art teachers used this book, there would be more readers and fans for this amazing artistic period! Hats off to the publisher for re-issuing this book!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gertrude: sometimes charming, sometimes not, November 30, 2008

By 

F. Schultz (PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company (Paperback)

Following a recent trip to Paris, I was inspired to learn more about the Americans who lived there in the early twentieth century. Some got their first taste of Paris at Gertrude Stein's Saturday night salon at 27, rue de Fleurus; others by being members of Sylvia Beach's lending library and bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. James Mellow in his Acknowledgements to Charmed Circle, says he wants to counter the legend of Stein and present her as an honest woman. I believe that he has achieved his goal. There is a tender side to Stein, being supportive and helpful to young writers and artists; but no doubt she could be arbitrary, rude and mean-spirited to others--sometimes those she had helped earlier. It is fascinating that her best-selling books: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Wars I Have Seen were also her most accessible books, and not the abstruse, repetitive, strangely punctuated books that publishers avoided for years. She and Picasso had a friendship that blew hot and cold over the years and she generally avoided friendships with successful American or English writers. Mellow doesn't spare presenting her warts, but it's clear that she has a creative spark and a hugely independent spirit. The human side of her seems to come out during the two world wars she lived through, especially during World War II when she and Alice lived in the countryside with ordinary French people.

A long book: 570 pages of small print in my paperback edition, plus 70 pages of notes and index, but well-written and informative. Also consider: Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch; Paris Was Yesterday by Janet Flanner; Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco; and, of course, A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars circle of friends and rivals of stein, September 26, 2003

By 

"doridorijjang" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company (Paperback)

for anyone who loves to be introduced
from one book to another
from one writer to another
from one artist to another
from one person to another.
it's one big ball of yarn that was carefully untangled to present the reader with two ends of the string.