Born Alice Babette Toklas on April 30, 1877 in San Francisco, California into a middle-class Jewish family, she is remembered as the long-term companion of the writer Gertrude Stein.
Educated at public schools and at the University of Seattle, she met Stein in Paris in 1907. Together they hosted a salon that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.
Acting as Stein's cook, secretary, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure until Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. After the death of Gertrude Stein in 1946, Ms. Toklas published her own literary memoir, a 1954 book that mixed reminiscences and recipes under the title The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. In 1963 she published her autobiography, What Is Remembered.
She died on March 7, 1967 and is buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.
