Gertrude Stein, Portraits and prayers, New York, Random House, 1934, Rare Books collection

Gertrude Stein is celebrated as one of the most innovative but difficult writers in the English language. Her writings reject standard literary structures, and her use of repetition and abstraction eludes interpretation. Stein settled in Paris in 1904 with her partner Alice B Toklas, mixing with leading avant-garde artists, composers and writers of the day. Some of Stein's contemporaries described her as having the head of a Roman emperor, carved from American granite.