ABSTRACT
In 1934, Gertrude Stein finally yielded to the entreaties of various friends and literary figures and agreed to undertake a lecture tour of the United States in response to the enormous popularity of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Although she had previously refused such suggestions-telling a reporter from the Herald Tribune, for instance, “There is not enough money in the world to persuade me to stand up before a horde of curious people who are interested in my personality rather than my work”—once she finally acquiesced, she found herself enjoying the prospect quite a bit (Mellow 452). “I am slowly but steadily getting pleased about getting over there and so is Alice,” she wrote to Carl Van Vechten in July of 1934, and by October of the same year, she and Alice arrived in New York (qtd in Souhami 201).
