Avant-garde liaison, artists’ matriarch, experimental writer: Spanish reception and translations of Gertrude Stein until 1978

Abstract

Gertrude Stein’s books were published late in Spain and her reception varied along the first three quarters of the 20^th century. While her first translated book dates back to 1967, several references to her can be found in the press since the 1920s and 1930s. This article examines the early Spanish approaches to Stein, including the first reviews of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas at the time of its publication in English (1933), the many allusions to her referring to various aspects—for example, as a social driving force of avant-gardism—, and the publication of her first translated books during the late Francoist era and the transition to democracy. To this end, we review a corpus of diverse documents, which consists of a diachronic newspaper survey, the translated works themselves, the relevant censorship reports, and the poetry anthologies from the period.