Hemingway described Stein's
salons in
A Moveable Feast. Stein's collection of
modern art was displayed in the apartment, including works by
Paul Cézanne,
Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, which she and her brother Leo had bought. In 1933, Stein published
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, a memoir of her life in Paris and driving an ambulance during
World War I, written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. The book was a bestseller and Stein went from relative obscurity to become a well known literary figure. The gatherings in the Stein home "brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art." Dedicated attendees included Pablo Picasso and his lover
Fernande Olivier,
Georges Braque, Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Guillaume Apollinaire and his lover
Marie Laurencin,
Sinclair Lewis,
James Joyce,
Ezra Pound,
Thornton Wilder,
Juan Gris,
Sherwood Anderson,
Francis Cyril Rose,
René Crevel,
Élisabeth de Gramont,
Francis Picabia,
Claribel Cone,
Mildred Aldrich,
Carl Van Vechten and
Henri Matisse,
André Derain,
Max Jacob,
Henri Rousseau, and
Joseph Stella. Saturday evenings had been set as the
jour fixe for formal congregation so Stein could work at her writing uninterrupted by impromptu visitors. Stein herself attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, as == In popular culture ==