The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Chapter Summary & Analysis - Chapter 4 Summary

Chapter 4 Summary

Alice B. Toklas describes Gertrude Stein's life before coming to Paris. We learn that the author was born in Pennsylvania and lived in a two-family house, which her parents shared with her uncle. Toklas explains that Stein's family is the inspiration for her follow-up to Three Lives, entitled The Making of Americans. The family moved to Europe, after her mother had an argument with her sister-in-law. They lived for a short while in Vienna, moving to Paris, three years later. The Steins eventually moved again, settling in California. Stein had a passion for reading books as a child. Her favorite writers were Shakespeare and William Wordsworth. The narrator explains that Stein and her brother visited the local library, eventually taking library books out from various mercantile and merchant libraries in their town. From the age of eight until her mid-teens, her favorite authors were Fielding, Clarissa Harlowe, and Samuel Smollett.