Literary Lunch

Margaret Anderson was born on November 24, 1886 in Indianapolis, Indiana. she was the eldest of three daughters. In 1903, she attended the Western College for Women but left to pursue a career as a pianist. When that did not work out she began writing book reviews for magazines such as The Dial. In 1913 she became a book critic for the Chicago Evening Post. In 1914, she founded The Little Review, a journal dedicated to art and literature. She met Jane Heap in 1916; she became her lover and the co-editor of the Little Review. In 1924, the couple moved to France. After the death of Jane Heap, Margaret became involved with the widow of Enrico Caruso.

The Little Review was an invaluable resource that published new and upcoming authors. Among those who they published were James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and many of the other authors of the “lost generation .” In 1920, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap were convicted of obscenity charges for serializing James Joyce’s Ulysses. They were each charged $100.  Margaret Anderson published a few books of her own; her three volume autobiography was published beginning in 1930. She also wrote a memoir called The Unknowable Gurdjieff in 1962.

Margaret Anderson died of emphysema on October 18, 1973.

Anna Sewell was born on March 30, 1820 in Great Yarmouth, England to Quaker parents. She had a younger brother, Philip. She was mostly home schooled but attended school from the age of 12 to 14. At 14, she broke both ankles in a fall and was disabled for the rest of her life; she couldn’t walk far or stand for long periods of time; she depended on horse carriages to get around. She never married and lived with her parents her entire life.

Anna Sewell wrote just one book. Black Beauty was published in late 1877.  It remains one of the most popular and enduring of children’s books. The life story of this horse is a true classic in children’s literature and it has been made adapted into numerous television series’ and movies. She wrote the book while she was bed-ridden, dictating it to her mother.

Anna Sewell died on April 25, 1878.

 Gertrude Stein by Picasso

Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She was the youngest of 5 children. By 1891, both her parents were dead and her oldest brother was the head of the family. Gertrude attended Radcliffe College from 1893 to 1897; she studied psychology. She also attended Johns Hopkins Medical School and left in 1901 without a degree. In 1903, she and her brother Leo moved to Paris where they started putting together a great personal art collection. Their collection included works by artists such as Gaugin, Cezanne and Renoir. In 1907, she met Alice B. Toklas who became her life-long partner. In 1913, she had a falling out with her brother and he moved to Italy. During the 1920s, her Paris salon became a gathering place for young artists such as Picasso and Matisse and writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Mina Loy . It was Gertrude who supposedly told Hemingway that he and his writer friends were a “lost generation .”

Gertrude Stein’s first published novel was Three Lives in 1909. In 1914, she published a collection of prose poems called Tender Buttons . She also wrote poetry. Some of her most well-known works includes The Making of Americans, published in 1925 and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933. Her collection of poems Stanza’s in Meditation and Other Poems was published in 1956.

 Gertrude Stein died of cancer on July 27, 1946.