The Plain Edition: Gertrude Stein and Modernist Book History, a talk by Sarah Stone

Pratt Institute
October 18th, 12:30, Alumni Reading Room

During the two years before The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas won Gertrude Stein popular success, she and Alice B. Toklas undertook their own publishing venture, the Plain Edition, “an Edition of first Editions of all the work not yet published of Gertrude Stein.” The design, paratexts, and distribution of these five books provide an opportunity to think about Stein’s poetics as they extend into material objects. This talk will discuss the connection between Stein’s writing and her books as material objects.

Sarah Stone is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Yale University. Her current work explores the intersection of poetry and media studies, focusing on modernist book history, as well as contemporary small-press publishing and digital poetics. She holds a B.A. in Rhetoric from U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University. Her poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in Jacket, Modern Review, Boston Review, Sentence, and Mandorla.