The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Familys Progress is a modernist novel by Gertrude Stein.
The novel traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the ctional Hersland and Dehning families. Stein also includes frequent
metactional meditations on the process of writing the
text that periodically overtake the main narrative.

4 Autobiographical elements

5 References

The book contains many autobiographical elements.

Some scholars argue that David Hersland is a ctional
representation of Gertrude Steins brother Leo.[7] Gossols, the Western city that the Hersland family calls home,
is said to be a stand-in for the Steins hometown of
Oakland, California.[8]

Publication history

[1] Moore, George B. Gertrude Steins The Making of Americans: Repetition and the Emergence of Modernism. Washington, DC: Peter Lang, 1998.

Stein wrote the bulk of the novel between 1903 and 1911,
and evidence from her manuscripts suggests three major
periods of revision during that time.[1] The manuscript
remained mostly hidden from public view until 1924
when, at the urging of Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox
Ford agreed to publish excerpts in the transatlantic review.[2] In 1925, the Paris-based Contact Press published
a limited run of the novel consisting of 500 copies. A
much-abridged edition was published by Harcourt Brace
in 1934, but the full version remained out of print until
Something Else Press republished it in 1966. In 1995, a
new, denitive edition was published by Dalkey Archive
Press with a foreword by William Gass.[3]

[2] Rainey, Lawrence. Book Review of The Making of Americans. Modernism/Modernity 4.2 (1997): 222-224.
[3] Stein, Gertrude. The Making of Americans. Normal, IL:
Dalkey Archive Press, 1995.
[4] Stein, The Making of Americans, 18.
[5] Gertrude Stein, Narration Ed. Thornton Wilder (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 24.
[6] Conrad Aiken, We Ask for Bread, Review of The Making of Americans, by Gertrude Stein, in The Critical Response to Gertrude Stein, Ed. Kirk Curnutt (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), 38-39. Originally published in The New Republic, 4 April 1934.

Characters

[7] Moore, 21.

Stein writes, the important matter in the history of the

Dehning family is the marrying of Julia[4] to Alfred Hersland, and Stein describes the members of each of their
families - as well as several peripheral characters with
whom the families are acquainted - in insistent, painstaking detail. The book lacks chapter divisions, but it is
roughly divided into sections corresponding to the lives of
one generation of Herslands: Alfred, his wife Julia (ne
Dehning), his sister Martha, and his brother David.

[8] Janice L. Doane, Silence and Narrative: The Early Novels

of Gertrude Stein, (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1986), 95.

Style

Stein employs a limited vocabulary and relies heavily

on the technique of repetition. Her unusual use of the
present participle is one of the most commonly noted features of the text.[5][6]
1

6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

Text

The Making of Americans Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Making%20of%20Americans?oldid=544887585 Contributors:

Malcolma, SmackBot, Curly Turkey, Gobonobo, Awoznick, Dsp13, Rettetast, GrahamHardy, Good Olfactory, Yobot, ChrisGualtieri,
Ciospo and Anonymous: 2

6.2

Images

File:The_Making_of_Americans.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/The_Making_of_Americans.jpg License:

Fair use Contributors:
It is believed that the cover art can or could be obtained from the publisher.
Original artist: ?

6.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0