Francesca Wade

Biographer Francesca Wade looks at the creation of the Gertrude Stein myth and finds a woman who wanted to be remembered for her work rather than her personality.

Stein was at the heart of Bohemian Parisian life where she hosted the likes of Matisse and Hemingway and posed for a portrait by Picasso. She travelled through the countryside with her companion Alice B Toklas and dazzled the American public with her sell-out tour for her autobiography. Wade says that Stein, on her deathbed, charged Toklas with securing her place in literary history. However, what would happen when Toklas started to tell the stories, especially when uncomfortable aspects of their past emerged?

Wade is author of Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. She has received fellowships from several universities and her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books and Granta.