''The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress'' is a

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

novel by

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

. The novel traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families. Stein also includes frequent metafictional meditations on the process of writing the text that periodically overtake the main narrative.

Publication history

Stein wrote the bulk of the novel between 1903 and 1911, and evidence from her manuscripts suggests three major periods of revision during that time. The manuscript remained mostly hidden from public view until 1924 when, at the urging of

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...

agreed to publish excerpts in the ''

transatlantic review Transatlantic, Trans-Atlantic or TransAtlantic may refer to: Film * Transatlantic Pictures, a film production company from 1948 to 1950 * Transatlantic Enterprises, an American production company in the late 1970s * ''Transatlantic'' (1931 film), ...

''. In 1925, the Paris-based Contact Press published a limited run of the novel consisting of 500 copies. A much-abridged edition was published by

Harcourt Brace Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City a ...

in 1934, but the full version remained out of print until Something Else Press republished it in 1966. In 1995, a new, definitive edition was published by

Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...

with a foreword by

William Gass William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...

Characters

Stein writes, "the important matter in the history of the Dehning family is the marrying of Julia" to Alfred Hersland, and Stein describes the members of each of their families - as well as several peripheral characters with whom the families are acquainted - in insistent, painstaking detail. The book lacks chapter divisions, but it is roughly divided into sections corresponding to the lives of one generation of Herslands: Alfred, his wife Julia (née Dehning), and his siblings, Martha and David.

Style

Stein employs a limited vocabulary and relies heavily on the technique of repetition. Her unusual use of the

present participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

is one of the most commonly noted features of the text.

Autobiographical elements

The book contains many autobiographical elements. Some scholars argue that David Hersland is a fictional representation of Gertrude Stein's brother Leo. Gossols, the Western city that the Hersland family calls home, is said to be a stand-in for the Steins' hometown of

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Making Of Americans Novels by Gertrude Stein 1925 American novels Modernist novels Works originally published in The Transatlantic Review (1924) Nonlinear narrative novels