- Born
- 30 April 1877San Francisco, California, USA
- Died
- 7 March 1967Paris, France · aged 89
Alice B. Toklas
She shared Gertrude Stein’s life in Paris for almost four decades, then found her own readers with a cookbook.
Alice Babette Toklas was born in San Francisco in 1877. She grew up in a Jewish family and spent part of her youth in Seattle. Arriving in Paris in 1907, she met Gertrude Stein and began a partnership that lasted until Stein’s death in 1946.
At their home at 27 rue de Fleurus, writers and artists gathered around a remarkable collection of modern paintings. Toklas managed the household and typed Stein’s manuscripts, helping sustain the daily life behind the celebrated salon. Her work was essential to a literary partnership in which Stein received most of the public attention.
Stein’s “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” (1933) told much of Stein’s own story in Toklas’s imagined voice. Toklas later published “The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book” (1954), combining recipes with recollections of their life together. A friend’s contribution, a recipe for hashish fudge, became its most notorious passage.
After Stein’s death, disputes over the estate left Toklas financially vulnerable. In 1961 Stein’s heirs removed the paintings from the apartment while Toklas was away. She died in Paris in 1967 and was buried beside Stein in Père Lachaise cemetery.