Stein, with dog Pepe, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, June 12, 1934. Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 - July 27, 1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. She moved to Paris in 1903, making France her home for the remainder of her life. A literary innovator and pioneer of Modernist literature, Stein's work broke with the narrative, linear, and temporal conventions of 19th century. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of cult literary figure into the light of mainstream attention. In 1934, she arrived in America after a 30 year absence. Her 6 month tour of the country encompassed 191 days of travel, criss-crossing 23 states and visiting 37 cities. She is the author of one of the earliest coming out stories "Q.E.D" (published in 1950 as Things as They Are), written in 1903 and suppressed by the author. The essay "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" is one of the first homosexual revelation stories to be published. She died in 1946, at the age of 72, from stomach cancer.