New Generation Thinkers - At Home With Gertrude Stein And Alice Toklas

Sophie Oliver takes us inside the remarkable home of the American novelist, poet and playwright Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice Toklas in Paris to look at the material objects they cherished - from an embroidered waistcoat that Alice made for Gertrude, to a series of stationary items branded with her famous line ‘Rose is a Rose is a Rose', and a fabric sculpture of their pet poodle, Basket, that Picasso made for Gertrude by way of an apology.

Using the objects, she takes listeners inside 27 rue de Fleurus, and into Stein's artistic and literary world, a world which expands well beyond Paris; her queer life with Alice; and her object-obsessed poetry. She reflects on what these objects meant to Gertrude and Alice and how they built a life with them. And she considers what our own domestic objects mean to us – in this time of over-consumption when the notion of ‘home' is so precarious.

Contributors

Liesl Olson, author of Modernism and the Ordinary (Oxford, 2009) and Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Hannah Roche, Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of York.

Producer

Mohini Patel

Sophie Oliver guides us inside the remarkable home of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas.

Sophie Oliver guides us inside the remarkable home of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris and focusses on the material objects they cherished as a window onto their world.

Sophie Oliver takes us inside the remarkable home of the American novelist, poet and playwright Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice Toklas in Paris to look at the material objects they cherished - from an embroidered waistcoat that Alice made for Gertrude to a fabric sculpture of their pet poodle, Basket, that Picasso made for Gertrude by way of an apology.

Using the objects, she takes listeners inside Stein's artistic and literary world; her queer life with Alice; and her object-obsessed poetry. She reflects on what these objects meant to Gertrude and Alice and how they built a life with them, and she considers if the home is always a place of refuge.

Victoria Avery, Keeper of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Laynie Brown, poet, prose writer, artist, editor and teacher at University of Pennsylvania.

Hannah Roche, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of York.

Music by Tom Parkinson

Objects courtesy of Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, and Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Sophie Oliver guides us inside the remarkable home of Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas in Paris and focuses on the material objects they cherished as a window onto their world.

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