Three Lives.
Inscribed to Edward Titus
Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. Stories of the Good Anna, Melanctha, and the Gentle Lena. New York: Grafton Press, 1909.
First edition of Stein’s first book, psychological portraits of three staunch women (two German-American servants, and a black woman, Melanctha: “Stories of the Good Anna,” “Melanctha,” and “The Gentle Lena”; 1000 copies, 300 of which, with a cancel title page, constituted the first English edition; issued without a dust-jacket. Wilson A1a.
A presentation copy, inscribed to Edward Titus, a wealthy maverick publisher among the literary expatriate community in Paris: To Edward W. Titus / from / Gertrude Stein.
This series of feminist novellas has an interesting history; Stein herself saw it as the first step in her surrealist marathon:
During the summer of 1904 with Leo Stein in Fiesole, she saw the Charles Losier collection of Cézannes in Florence and began purchasing paintings. “Everything I have done has been influenced by Flaubert and Cézanne,” Stein said in an interview with Robert Haas in 1946 (she translated some Flaubert stories in 1909); “this gave me a new feeling about composition. Up to that time composition had consisted of a central idea, to which everything else was an accompaniment and separate but was not an end in itself, and Cézanne conceived the idea that in composition one thing was as important as another thing. Each part is as important as the whole, and that impressed me enormously, ... so much that I began to write Three Lives under this influence.” Stein considered the highly acclaimed “Melanctha” (the second part of Three Lives), which recounts the story of a Negro woman, the “quintessence” of “this idea of composition.” (CDALB: The Twenties, 1917-1929. Gale Research, 1989. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC)
The second story, “Melanctha,” is now the best-known of the three, often cited for its race and gender politics:
“Melanctha,” … commentators note, is essentially a reworking of the love story in Q.E.D., this time presenting it as a heterosexual affair between two black characters [though one is, importantly, Mulatto]. Although critics now recognize “Melanctha” as an inaccurate, stereotyped depiction of black American life, it was virtually unprecedented as a serious attempt by a white author to portray realistic black characters. Both Q.E.D. and Three Lives, although relatively conventional, contain some traces of Stein’s later, experimental style, such as minimal punctuation, lack of emphasis on plot, and the depiction of characters as psychological types rather than as unique individuals.
Despite the inclusion of this “minor masterpiece,” it took Stein three years to get the collection published. She voiced her concerns early on in a letter to a friend: “I am afraid that I can never write the great American novel. I don’t know how to sell on a margin or do anything with shorts or longs, so I have to content myself with niggers and servant girls and the foreign population generally… [The stories are] very simple and very vulgar and I don’t think they will interest the great American public…” (James Mellow, Charmed Circle, NY: Praeger, 1974, p. 77). She was much more optimistic after sending the typescript to Hutchins Hapgood, her friend and an established writer with strong connections in publishing circles: “It will certainly make your hair curl with the complication and the tintinabulation of its style but I’m very fond of it, nothing will discourage me. I think it a noble combination of Swift and Matisse…” (Mellow, p. 125).
Hapgood’s response was enthusiastic, as most reviews ultimately would be, but his fear that Stein would have difficulties finding a publisher for stylistic reasons proved to be well-founded. Grafton, however, eventually accepted the manuscript. After initially slow sales of their first edition, universally positive reviews established Stein as a rising star in the rapidly strengthening firmament of the new realism.
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