Lunch with the Libraries: Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein!

Presented by Hopkins at Home, Sheridan Libraries and Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries

Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein! 

Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874—almost 150 years ago! After growing up in Vienna, Paris, and Oakland CA, she attended the “Radcliffe Annex” for women at Harvard University, and then the Johns Hopkins Medical School in one of the first classes that accepted female students. Although she did not finish her medical degree, she put her psychological training to use in experimental writing that makes unusual insights into character and challenges readers’ cognitive habits.

We will celebrate this major birthday milestone with a peek into a large collection of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, and ephemera by and about Gertrude Stein created by Robert A. Wilson (1922-2016), Class of 1943, a life-long Stein fan and collector. Our tour guides will be three undergraduate students who worked intensively with the collection last semester. Their “mini-exhibits” help us understand Gertrude Stein’s literary ambitions and the ways her work has been re-interpreted over time.

For more information about the Robert A. Wilson Collection of Gertrude Stein Materials, please see:

• Bret McCabe, “In Memoriam: Book Collector, Johns Hopkins Alum Robert Wilson dies at 94.” JHU HUB, December 20, 2016. https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/12/20/robert-wilson-in-memoriam/ 
• Michael Yockel, “Seeing Robert Wilson Plain.” Johns Hopkins Magazine, Winter 2018. https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2018/winter/robert-wilson-gertrude-stein-collector/