Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Oakland, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures in modernism in literature and art would meet, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound and Henri Matisse. Stein’s books include Q.E.D. (1903), Fernhurst (1904), Three Lives (1905-06), The Making of Americans (1902-1911) and Tender Buttons (1912). In the latter work, Stein comments on lesbian sexuality. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, Stein may have been able to save her life and sustain her lifestyle as an art collector through the protection of powerful Vichy government official Bernard Faÿ.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known) and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair. He was born on September 24, 1896 and died on December 21, 1940.
Aldous Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He is best known for his novels, including Brave New World (1932), and a wide-ranging output of essays, including The Doors of Perception (1954). Huxley was a humanist, pacifist and satirist. He spent the later part of his life in Los Angeles and became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular Vivekanda’s Neo-Vedanta and Universalism. Huxley is also well known for his advocacy and consumption of psychedelic drugs. He was born on this day in 1894.
Ernest Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His minimalist style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. In 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He was born on July 21, 1899 and committed suicide in 1961.
A culturally influential German-language novelist born on this day in 1883. Kafka is most famous his 1915 novella “The Metamorphosis” featuring Gregor Samsa, who wakes up to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect-like creature. This 8-bit Kafka character is based on Samsa, who was the fictional alter ego of Kafka.
