Three Lives and Tender Buttons (Signet Classics) [Paperback]

Gertrude Stein (Author), Diane Souhami (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Signet Classics | Publication Date: February 4, 2003

Three short stories and prose poetry by the famous feminist... Three Lives is "a fine new kind of realism." (William James)

Tender Buttons is "to writing what cubism is to art." (W.G. Rogers)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gertrude Stein, as a college student at Radcliffe and a medical student at Johns Hopkins Medical School, was a privileged woman, but she was surrounded by women who were trapped by poverty, class, and race into lives that offered little choice. Her portraits of Anna and Lena are examples of realistic depictions of immigrant women who had no occupational choice but to become domestic workers. This collection of documents from the history of women's suffrage, medical history, modernist art, and literature enables readers to see how radical Stein's subject was. Three Lives consists of three character studies of women; "The Good Anna"--a kind but domineering German servingwoman; "Melanctha"--an uneducated but sensitive black girl; "The Gentle Lena"--a pathetically feebleminded young German maid. Stein published 26 books starting with this collection of three stories in 1909. This is her first book and she self published only 500 hard copies. She had to fight with the publisher to get it published her way. He wanted to make it more conventional. It was not written as a novel aimed at wide popular sales. She was seeking a smaller and a more critical audience. When it was written, she had left Baltimore and was living in Paris on money inherited from her father. She had the luxury of being able to do whatever she wanted. As a result, she bought paintings and wrote experimental fiction. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Signet Classics (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451528727
• ISBN-13: 978-0451528728
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine inexpensive edition. Other review is for audiotape!, December 30, 2006

By 

Brian A. Oard (Midwestern USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Lives and Tender Buttons (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

This is a fine, inexpensive edition of one of Stein's two most readable productions (the other being 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'). I'm giving it five stars because the item's star rating has been impaired by a reviewer who's reviewing an audiotape, NOT the signet paperback book on this page.

5.0 out of 5 stars Tender Buttons, May 29, 2009

By 

Melinda S. Roth "total drawer" (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Three Lives and Tender Buttons (Paperback)

Tender Buttons is a great set of writing. I would also recommend the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as well as her book Paris, France.

I love Ms. Stein.

4 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not good Gertrude, not good anything, June 17, 2005

By 

Molly M (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: "Three Lives" and "Tender Buttons" (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection) (Audio Cassette)

Do yourself a favor and listen to Gertrude Stein reading Gertrude Stein, before or instead of listening to this recording. Enjoy Ms. Stein's crisp diction and the wonderful rhythms of her prose and prose/poems. Hear the way the sounds cascade through the phrases and the way the phrases become the meaning.

Then, if you must, listen to this Flo Gibson set. Possibly you won't listen to much of it. I disliked it intensely. The reader appears neither to understand nor to like the material and reads with unremitting dullness of diction and unrelentingly pedestrian rhythm. In an apparent attempt to give some workaday meaning to Stein's rippling, dancing phrases, many words are heavily overemphasized, like an extremely bad and condescending reading of a children's book. But do remember --you may not react as I did.

The reading is not helped by pops and hissings, especially noticeable and intrusive on the beginning consonants of most syllables.