Gladys Bronwyn Stern

Gladys Bronwyn Stern or GB Stern (17 June 1890 – 20 September 1973), born Gladys Bertha Stern in London, England, wrote many novels, short stories, plays, memoirs, biographies and literary criticism.

The National Portrait Gallery holds four portraits of her.[1]

GB Stern was born on 17 June 1890 in North Kensington, London, the second, by some years, of two sisters. Her family lost their money in the Vaal River diamond crash. After that, they lived in a series of apartments, hotels and boarding houses. Gladys was schooled in England until the age of 16, when, with her parents, she traveled to the continent and studied in Germany and Switzerland.

She wrote her first novel, "Pantomime," in 1914 at the age of 20. Her first critical success came with "Twos and Threes" in 1916. Her most popular books were the series known by the name of the first, "The Matriarch." This was first published as "Tents of Israel" in 1924. The others in the series are "A Deputy Was King" (1926), "Mosaic" (1930), "Shining and Free" (1935) and "The Young Matriarch" (1942).

The Matriarch series revolved around the Rakonitz and Czelovar families and were based on her own family. They are well-to-do and cosmopolitan Jews who settled in England from Hungary, Poland, Russia and Austria. Like her family, they suffer through an economic crash.

The first book in the series,"The Matriarch," centers around two characters, the matriarch Anastasia and her granddaughter, Toni. Anastasia was based on Stern's great-aunt, who was incensed with the portrayal until the book became successful. The book describes in detail the complicated, florid and noisy life of this Jewish-English family through both triumphs and failures, weddings and funerals.

The men in the story are not completely formed, as they play only peripheral roles in family life. They were there mainly to provide income and were always outlived by the Rakonitz women. It is to the matriarch that family members come to with their problems and Anatasia rules with an iron, if rather eccentric, hand. Like all the young members of the family, Toni chaffs under this rule and vows to be nothing like her "grandmere."

Stern's plays include The Man Who Pays The Piper (1931), which was revived by the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London in 2013.

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