The Making of Americans

This edition makes available again one of Gertrude Stein's most characteristic and most important works. First published in Paris in the nineteen-twenties in a longer version, this extraordinary novel tells the history of several generations of an American family; it also, as the author explains, tells the "history of the governesses and the seamstresses and servants in the house with them and more history of the families in the small houses near them, and histories of every one they ever came to know in their living..." This is Miss Stein's unique way of portraying America and Americans in continuity. Her writing abounds in humor, engaging digressions, and insights of startling accuracy. Yet it is her celebrated style, introduced in this book, that transforms the narrative of a family into a work of timeless distinction.