Alice B. Toklas

People remember American writer Alice Babette Toklas as the domestic partner of Gertrude Stein; her works include cookbooks and a volume of memoirs.

She joined as a member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Born to a Polish army officer in a middle-class Jewish family, she attended schools in San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time, she also studied music at the University of Washington.

She arrived in Paris and met on 8 September 1907.

Together, they hosted a salon that attracted expatriates, such as Ernest Miller Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Niven Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque.

Toklas, a background figure, acted as confidante, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer and chiefly living in the shadow until she published in 1933 under the teasing title

The Autobiography of Alice Babette Toklas

, bestselling book.

Source: Wikipedia