SOURCE: “The Beginnings,” in Gertrude Stein, Twayne Publishers, 1976, pp. 24–37.

In the following essay, Hoffman presents an overview of Three Lives and considers its role as one of Stein's first published works.

Settled in Montparnasse at 27, rue de Fleurus, Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo became quickly acquainted with the emerging Modernist art and inevitably with many painters who lived in the artists' quarter. During this time, Stein continued the quiet work in her notebooks; and, in the spring of 1905, she began her next book, Three Lives, on which she proceeded steadily until she completed it the following February.¹ During this time, the “fauves” were first exhibited at the Autumn Salon, and Stein posed for the now famous portrait by Picasso that hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, she claims to have begun Three Lives by attempting a translation of Gustave Flaubert's...