Ida - Hardcover

"Step by difficult step Logan Esdale slowly entered Stein's domain where she alone had made decisions working on Ida, composing her novel and figuring out what to do with Ida and how. Esdale's book now becomes a handbook, a new approach to Stein scholarship, and authorship, based on Stein's own archive. He wanted to discover for himself and to show us how she worked as she did." -- Ulla Dydo, author of Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises, 1923-1934

"For those brave souls who undertake to read and teach that strangest of short novels in British and American literature, Gertrude Stein's Ida, Logan Esdale's edition is the indispensable text. It is a major contribution to the scholarship and the interpretation of Gertrude Stein's literary art. Esdale brilliantly sets forth the history and the world of Ida, its universe of discourse. If only I'd had Esdale's text when I was supposing what Ida said." -- Neil Schmitz, author of Of Huck and Alice: Humorous Writing in American Literature

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was born in Allegheny, PA, of German-Jewish immigrants. She moved to Paris in 1903 and lived in France for the rest of her life. She published Ida A Novel in 1941, eight years after she became famous for her best-selling Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Logan Esdale teaches at California State University, Long Beach.