The Conference Press was the creation of three UCLA students, Hal Levy, Gilbert A. Harrison, and William Bayard Okie. The three were writers for the college newspaper The Daily Bruin, and they formed the press after a visit to Hollywood writer William Saroyan. Harrison had begun corresponding with Gertrude Stein in 1933, met her in Pasadena during her 1934-1935 American tour, and visited Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris in 1937. This relationship led to the publication of Stein's work What Are Masterpieces? by the Conference Press in 1940. Harrison went on to become editor-in-chief of The New Republic magazine. He also wrote and edited books on literature, among them Gertrude Stein's America and Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas.

Selected materials from this digital collection includes the publishers' archive for Gertrude Stein's book, What Are Masterpieces? (Los Angeles: Conference Press, 1940), as well as several Stein manuscript fragments and notes, offprints, reviews, and other Stein ephemera.