Gertrude Stein's celebrity in America has often been discussed in relation to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, the bestseller published by Alfred Harcourt in 1933. This talk will argue that Stein's enduring fame was largely due to Bennett Cerf (the co-founder of Random House), not to Harcourt. Cerf, who later became a celebrity himself, made fun of his own author during interviews and wrote satirical blurbs and press releases about her.

Drawing on a wide range of media (print, radio, film), this innovative marketing strategy allowed Stein to become a genuine modernist star. Lise Jaillant is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Twentieth-Century Literature at Newcastle University, UK. Her research focuses on British and American publishers and their impact on the literary canon. She has articles published or forthcoming in journals such as Book History, Clio, James Joyce Quarterly and Studies in the Novel. Her first monograph, Modernism, Middlebrow and the Canon in the Modern Library Series, 1917-1955, will be published in Pickering & Chattos s new series Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace. Her research was based on extensive archival work in the Random House archive and Bennett Cerf papers at Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

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