Alice B. Toklas

Alice Babette Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.

Alice B. Toklas was born in San Francisco into a middle-class Polish Jewish family. Her paternal grandfather was a rabbi, whose son Feivel (usually known as Ferdinand) Toklas moved to San Francisco in 1863. In 1876, Ferdinand Toklas married Emma (Emelia) Levinsky and they had two children: Alice and her brother Clarence Ferdinand (1887–1924).

In 1890, the Toklas family moved to Seattle, where her father was one half of Toklas, Singerman and Company, the city's leading dry goods store.

Toklas was educated in local schools, which included the Mount Rainier Seminary, and attended the University of Washington where she studied piano.

When her mother became ill, the family moved back to San Francisco. Her mother died in 1897, aged 41.

Five months after the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Toklas left the city and moved to Paris. On September 8, 1907, the day after she arrived in Paris, she met Gertrude Stein. This marked the beginning of a relationship which lasted for nearly four decades, ending in 1946 with Stein's death.

Together they hosted a salon in the home they shared at 27 rue de Fleurus that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson as well as avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.

Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until the publication by Stein of Toklas' "memoirs" in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's best-selling book.