Offers a new way of reading Gertrude Stein's key publications as responses to the politics of authorship and aesthetic participation Exploring the politics of the right to write in Gertrude Stein's practice and its reception, this book examines how conceptions of authorship intersected discourses of democracy and rights in the period 1909-1933. Persistent debates across a broad range of publication contexts over Stein's legitimacy as a modernist author provide an instructive example of the ways in which literary culture reflected contemporary political discussion. This study explores how Stein reconfigured her authorship in response to rapidly changing political and cultural conditions, and examines how arguments over her authorial validity reproduced debates about who should participate in public life, refracted an emerging discourse of human rights and echoed fears about the consequences of mass democracy as political franchise was extended. Isabelle Parkinson is a Teaching Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London