Lucy Church Amiably.
Stein, Gertrude. Lucy Church Amiably. Paris: Imprimerie <<Union>>, 1930.
8vo.; blue paper-covered boards; light edgewear; a lovely copy of a notoriously fragile book. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of the first of Stein’s self-published works; 1000 copies, the entire edition.
In the fall of 1903 Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) moved to Paris, joining her brother Leo at his home and soon sister and brother began exploring local art galleries, becoming collectors of works by Cézanne, Rousseau, Matisse, Renoir, Braque, and Picasso. The challenge of these artists to received principles of painting prodded Stein into experimenting with literary forms and principles. Her first book Three Lives (1909) employed an early form of stream of consciousness. “Her repetitions of syntax and language gave Three Lives a distinctly modern flavor” (Women’s Writing). She continued to experiment in The Making Of Americans (1911) and Tender Buttons (1914) and firmly established a reputation as an avant-gardist. The apartment she shared with Alice Toklas at 27, rue de Fleurus became a magnet for expatriate Americans in the 1920s with Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach, Paul Bowles and Ernest Hemingway among her widening circle of friends. Members of this circle of writers and artists admired Stein’s work; the general reading public, however, remained puzzled and aloof and this troubled Stein. At the age of 56 in 1930, Stein was becoming increasingly concerned about her writing career. Much of her work was unpublished because publishers would not risk publishing her often-difficult theoretical and experimental pieces.
In response to this situation, Stein and Toklas decided to publish Stein’s works on their own. To finance this project, Stein sold one of her Picasso paintings, Woman With A Fan, and Toklas and Stein used their home for private press, under which imprint they printed five books: Lucy Church Amiably (1930); How To Write and Before The Flowers Of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded (1931); Operas And Plays (1932); and Matisse Picasso And Gertrude Stein (1933).
Lucy Church Amiably was the first book in the Plain Edition series. The book, subtitled “A Novel of Romantic beauty and nature which Looks Like an Engraving,” was composed by Stein in 1927 while she was staying in Bilignin, and the language of the book reflects the pastoral scenery of the region. Outwardly, the book appears to be a novel, having standard sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc., but Stein intentionally wrote it as a novel without a plot, designing it instead as an impression of joy and contentment in a natural environment. Stein described the book as “a landscape…in which there are some people.” Contemporary critics considered this work meaningless and some mocked Stein’s style in reviews, but others were impressed by her playful, although hermetic, language.
As the first book in the Plain Edition series, Lucy Church Amiably was an important project for Stein and Toklas. Stein modeled the binding of the first edition on the blue copybooks of French schoolchildren because she used similar copybooks for her own writing. Although the printing of this edition was troubled with many problems (e.g. unsatisfactory bindings and uncorrected typographical errors), Stein was delighted once the book was in print. The book was not a commercial success, but for Stein, the Plain Edition of Lucy Church Amiably was a milestone, marking one of the first times she could walk the streets of Paris and elsewhere and see her work on display in store windows. Wilson A32b and A14a.
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