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Two years before the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) was established, James D. Hart, then director of The Bancroft Library, commissioned an interview with Alice B. Toklas. Ms. Toklas, already in her mid-70s, was still residing in an apartment she once shared with Gertrude Stein in Paris. The interview, which took place at the end of Autumn 1952, was relatively long—more than six hours—and covered a wide variety of topics, including Toklas's and Stein's childhoods in California, the Paris arts scene, and the difficulties of living under Nazi rule in wartime France. The most compelling element of this interview, though, is Toklas herself, who emerges from Stein's long shadow and proves herself to be a remarkably thoughtful, intelligent, opinionated, and feisty woman in her own right. Some attribute this interview as establishing a "proof of concept" which soon led to the founding of ROHO. Although available to researchers in the Bancroft archives for decades, this interview transcript was made available broadly to the public only this year in junction with The Bancroft Library Gallery exhibit, “A Place at the Table: A Gathering of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Text, Image & Voice.” Transcript in loose leaf of an interview on Gertrude Stein's early life; the Stein family; Toklas' family, and upbringing in San Francisco. Correspondence between Toklas and James D. Hart, and questions directed by Hart to the interviewer are included.

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