The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Literary Criticism & Book Review

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Critical Overview

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas remains Stein's best-selling book largely because of its accessibility. Stein began sending chapters to her agent William Aspenwall Bradley in the summer of 1932, and John Lane's Bodley Head Press quickly snapped up the rights for an English edition. Harcourt Brace agreed to publish the American edition. When it was published in 1933, reviewers almost uniformly praised its genius. Bernard Fay, for example, in the Saturday Review of Literature wrote, "There has never been a more entertaining and more easy walk through life than this book." Reviewing the book for the New York-Herald Tribune Books, Louis Bromfield, like Fay, spends considerable more ink writing about Stein's life than the "autobiography. " Bromfield notes: "Stein has an extraordinary power of personality and it is my impression that she has the clearest intelligence I have ever encountered." Of Stein's book, Bromfield writes, "She has achieved brilliantly...
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