Geography and Plays

by Gertrude Stein, Cyrena N. Pondrom (Introduction)

Overview

Geography and Plays is a collection of Gertrude Stein’s writing from about 1908 to 1920. Originally published in 1922 with an introduction by Sherwood Anderson, it was almost inaccessible for many years. This edition makes it possible for students and other devotees of Stein to see the developing strategies of one of the acknowledged giants of literary modernism, whose pathbreaking departures in literary style have recently been assigned still greater importance in light of new theories about women’s writing. An introduction by Cyrena N. Pondrom provides contemporary readers with a fine orientation to the importance of Stein’s achievement in this early work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299134730
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	12/05/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	434
File size:	659 KB

About the Author

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) is also the author of Three Lives, Tender Buttons, The Making of Americans, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and dozens of other novels, plays, poems, and stories. Cyrena N. Pondrom is professor of English and director of the Women’s Studies Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Table of Contents

An Introduction to the Achievement of Gertrude Stein
    By Cyrena N. Pondrom
Analysis of Contents of Geography and Plays
    By Style and Chronology

Geography and Plays
The Work of Gertrude Stein
    By Sherwood Anderson
Table of Contents of Original Edition

Notes on Contents and Dates of Composition
Bibliography
Index of Works
General Index

Editorial Reviews

Makes available at reasonable cost Stein's 1922 collection. Preceding the original introduction by Sherwood Anderson is an "Introduction to the Achievement of Gertrude Stein" by Cyrena N. Pondrom, and an anaylsis of the contents of the work by style and chronology. Notes on the contents and dates, an index of works, and a bibliography follow the selections. Paper edition (unseen), ($14.95). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Geography and Plays  is a cornucopia of genre:  there are poems, stories, plays, portraits, and perhaps ‘essays’.  In short, the collection is a one-volume introduction to the most boldly experimental period in the work of the most boldly experimental American writer of the twentieth century.”—Cyrena N. Pondrom, University of Wisconsin-Madison



“More and more clearly, Stein is being seen for what she is:  one of the towering figures of modernism and of experiments with language and literary genre.  Geography and Plays  is a central text in Stein’s oeuvre  and in literary modernism.”—Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University



“Here is one artist who has been able to accept ridicule, who has even foregone the privilege of writing the Great American Novel, uplifting our English-speaking stage and wearing the bays of the great poets, to go live among the little housekeeping words, the swaggering bullying street-corner words, and all the other forgotten and neglected citizens of the sacred and half-forgotten city.”—Sherwood Anderson, from the Introduction to the 1922 edition.

From the Publisher