The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Stein's earlier and better-known book about the same Paris life, told in the voice of Alice B. Toklas.
Read our takeParis France
Gertrude Stein
Paris France
Gertrude Stein's short book about why she chose France, written in the last months before the German army reached Paris.
- 1940
- 120
- Wry
- Exuberant
- Atmospheric
- voice-driven
- autobiographical
- episodic
- funny
About Gertrude Stein
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeParis France is Gertrude Stein's account of what France meant to her, from a year in Paris at the age of four to nearly four decades of living there. She moves between her San Francisco childhood, the rue de Fleurus years, her French neighbours in the country near Belley, and the war that had just been declared. Along the way she argues that writers need two countries, and that Paris was where the twentieth century was.[1] Charles Scribner's Sons in New York and B.T. Batsford in London published it in 1940, in 120 pages with colour plates.[2] Penguin's current edition says it came out on the day Paris fell to Germany.[3]
The story, in more detail
The book opens with a sentence Stein repeats all the way through: "Paris, France is exciting and peaceful." She then goes back to being four years old in Paris, eating soup for breakfast and leg of mutton and spinach for lunch. A black cat jumped on her mother's back, which she remembers as more exciting than peaceful.[3]
The next pages are about France seen from California. In San Francisco there was a French theatre, and Stein heard Sarah Bernhardt act. She stood inside a painted panorama of the Battle of Waterloo, and she saved up for a photograph of Jean-François Millet's The Man with the Hoe. A French family she calls the Henry Henrys served gigot for dinner with knives sharpened as thin as daggers.[3]
Most of the book is Stein's theory of the French, told through people she knew. Her old servant Hélène goes quiet when Stein asks which political party her husband belongs to. An old friend, Madame Pierlot, gives opinions at eighty-eight. Pablo Picasso tells her never to get the same kind of dog again, and she gets another poodle called Basket anyway.[1] The claims are sweeping and she knows it. The French, she says, are logical, they understand fashion, and they become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three.
The last part was written after France had gone to war in September 1939. Stein and Alice B. Toklas were at their rented summer house in Bilignin when war was declared, and they stayed in the country.[4] The book records air-raid alerts in the village and a Frenchman insisting that a new war would not be logical.[1] A French translation came out in Algiers in October 1941, published by Edmond Charlot.[4]
What's inside
A childhood with France in it. Stein's year in Paris at four and five, then the French things that reached her in San Francisco: Sarah Bernhardt, the Waterloo panorama, a Millet print, and a French family's dinners. She says French is a spoken language and English is a written one.[3]
Why writers need a second country. Stein argues that a writer needs one country to belong to and another to live in. She says her American generation chose France, as Victorian writers had chosen Italy. She then explains why Paris suited the painters and writers of her time, herself included.[3][1]
The French, as Stein sees them. Short chapters on logic, fashion, tradition and what she calls becoming civilised. She tells the difference between a fashion and propaganda, and she blames the Surrealists for missing their moment of becoming civilised. The examples come from her servants, her neighbours, shopkeepers and her dogs.[1]
The country near Belley as war comes. The final pages move to the villages of the Ain, where Stein and Alice B. Toklas spent their summers. She reports alerts in Bilignin and what the farmers and shopkeepers say about the war.[1]
Themes and analysis
Two countries
The best-known idea in the book comes in its opening pages. Stein writes that everybody who writes wants to live inside themselves and tell what is there. So writers need two countries: the one where they belong and the one where they actually live. The second one, she says, is romantic and separate from them.
She gives examples. English Victorians felt that way about Italy, and early nineteenth-century Americans felt it about Spain. Her own generation of Americans felt it about France. She adds that a writer can sometimes discover their own country as if it were the foreign one, and names Rudyard Kipling and Louis Bromfield.
Stein had been living that theory since 1903. She moved to Paris to join her brother Leo Stein, and she lived at 27 rue de Fleurus until March 1938, when she and Alice B. Toklas moved to the rue Christine. In the book she describes the rue de Fleurus as a quarter only a hundred years old. She notes that even Picasso and Georges Braque in Montmartre did not live in old houses.
Written while the war began
Stein wrote the book across the months when war went from unlikely to real. Around the middle of the book she reports a conversation with a Frenchman of forty-five who had fought in the First World War. He tells her a new war would not be logical, because his son would have to fight it with him. He keeps saying the same thing: "It is not logical."
Later pages are written from inside the war. In September 1939 Stein and Alice B. Toklas were at Bilignin, the country house near Belley they had rented since the late 1920s. They got a forty-eight-hour pass to go to Paris for their passports and winter clothes, and to secure the paintings at the rue Christine flat. The book mentions several air-raid alerts in Bilignin.
The date the book appeared is less simple than its reputation. Penguin's 2025 edition says it was published on the day Paris fell to Germany, which was 14 June 1940. The Library of Congress record for the first edition, printed in Great Britain, carries the printed note "First published, April 1940." Both dates circulate, and the April note is the one printed in the book itself.
The book reached French readers through Algiers, not Paris. Edmond Charlot, a bookseller and publisher there, issued a French translation by Madame d'Aiguy in October 1941. By then Stein and Toklas were living in unoccupied France, and Stein was still writing about the war. Her journal of those years became Wars I Have Seen, published in 1945.
Logic, fashion and becoming civilised
Stein's big claims about the French rest on three words: logic, fashion and civilisation. She says the French know what is a fashion and what is not. She calls the difference between propaganda and fashion "very interesting" and keeps coming back to it.
Her rule about growing up is stated flatly: "All Frenchmen know that you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three." She uses the rule to attack the Surrealists. In her view, they used their revolt as a public thing instead of a private one. They wanted publicity, she says, not civilisation.
Readers should take these as Stein's opinions, not as findings. She generalises about millions of people from her servants, a few neighbours and old friends like Madame Pierlot. The generalising is also the fun of the book. The people she quotes often answer her back, and she lets them win.
Quotes from Paris France
Paris, France is exciting and peaceful.
French is a spoken language English really is not.
France is made of ground, of earth.
All Frenchmen know that you have to become civilised between eighteen and twenty-three
Why we recommend it
The American case for Paris, in Stein's own words
Stein explains why her generation chose France and why Paris suited the painters and writers she knew. The lines about two countries and about Paris being where the twentieth century was come from this book.
France on the edge of the war
The last part was written after war was declared in September 1939, in the villages near Belley. The book records what farmers, servants and friends said while nobody yet knew what would happen.
Short, funny and easy to start
The book is a couple of hours long and full of dogs, servants, hats and dinners. Paris France is one of the easiest ways into Stein after The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- Stein says writers need two countries, one to belong to and one to live in. Does that match anyone you know who lives abroad?
- The phrase "exciting and peaceful" comes back again and again. What does Stein mean by it by the end of the book?
- Stein generalises about the French from a handful of servants, neighbours and friends. Where does that work, and where does it fail?
- The book was finished as the war began. Which passages read differently once you know what happened in June 1940?
Timeline
1903
Gertrude Stein moves to Paris to join her brother Leo Stein and settles at 27 rue de Fleurus.
1938
In March, Stein and Alice B. Toklas leave 27 rue de Fleurus for the rue Christine.
1939
War is declared in September while Stein and Toklas are at their summer house in Bilignin. They make a forty-eight-hour trip to Paris for passports, clothes and the paintings.
1940
Charles Scribner's Sons and B.T. Batsford publish Paris France. The printed note reads "First published, April 1940."
1940
German troops enter Paris on 14 June. Penguin's later edition gives this as the book's publication day.
1941
Edmond Charlot publishes a French translation by Madame d'Aiguy in Algiers in October.
2013
Liveright reissues the book with an introduction by Adam Gopnik.
2025
Penguin adds Paris France to its Penguin Archive series.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Charles Scribner's Sons and B.T. Batsford
- 1940
- Paperback
- Liveright
- 1996
- 9780871401601
- Paperback
- Liveright
- 2013
- 9780871403742
- Paperback
- Penguin Books
- 2025
- 9780241746806
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
Picasso
Gertrude Stein
Picasso
Stein's book about Picasso, first issued in Paris two years earlier. Picasso turns up in Paris France giving advice about dogs.
Read our take
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book
Alice B. Toklas's own memoir in recipes, which covers the same house at Bilignin and the war years that follow the end of Paris France.
Read our take
Looking Backwards
Colette's pieces from the first year of the Occupation. A French writer's France set beside an American's, written a few months apart.
Read our take
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway's memoir of Paris in the 1920s, which visits Stein's apartment and gives his side of their friendship.
Read our takeParis France: frequently asked questions
What is Paris France about?
Gertrude Stein's personal account of France and the French. She starts with her childhood year in Paris and French things she met in San Francisco. She then explains why her generation of American writers chose France, and ends in the villages near Belley as the Second World War begins.
When was Paris France published?
In 1940, by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York and B.T. Batsford in London. The first edition carries the note "First published, April 1940." Penguin's 2025 edition says it came out on the day Paris fell to Germany, 14 June 1940.
Is Paris France a novel?
No. It is sometimes listed as a novel, but it is a memoir mixed with opinion. Stein writes in her own voice about real people, including her servant Hélène, her friend Madame Pierlot and Pablo Picasso.
Where was Gertrude Stein living when she wrote it?
In Paris at the rue Christine, where she and Alice B. Toklas moved from 27 rue de Fleurus in March 1938. Summers were spent at a rented house in Bilignin, near Belley. They were at Bilignin when war was declared in September 1939.
Where does "Paris was where the twentieth century was" come from?
From Paris France (1940), in the part where Stein explains why modern painting and writing happened in Paris. A few lines later she says Paris was the place that suited those who were to create twentieth-century art and literature, herself included.
Was Paris France translated into French?
Yes, during the war. Edmond Charlot published a translation by Madame d'Aiguy in Algiers in October 1941.
Can I read Paris France for free?
Not in full. Penguin publishes the opening pages as a free extract, and the Internet Archive holds a scan of the 1940 edition for borrowing. Current paperbacks come from Liveright and Penguin.
If you like Gertrude Stein
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.
Ernest Hemingway
Her most famous pupil — the tutorials at the rue de Fleurus, the godmother years, and the 'lost generation' epigraph all passed through her studio before the celebrated falling-out.
View author
Sherwood Anderson
Her loudest American champion — he wrote the introduction to her Geography and Plays, and it was his letter that first brought Hemingway to her door.
View author
Henry Miller
The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.
View author
References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Paris France, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2↑Paris France — Library of Congress catalog record for the 1940 first edition (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York; B.T. Batsford, London; LCCN 40027586)
ArchiveLibrary of Congress, 1940Used forLibrary of Congress record for the 1940 first edition: publishers, pagination, plates, and the note "First published, April 1940."
5Paris France — Library of Congress catalog record for the 2013 Liveright paperback with an introduction by Adam Gopnik (LCCN 2012050537, ISBN 9780871403742)
ArchiveLibrary of Congress, 2013Used forLibrary of Congress record for the 2013 Liveright paperback with Adam Gopnik's introduction, used to confirm the ISBN.
6Paris France
MemoirGertrude Stein, 1940Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
Explore more resources