Gertrude Stein stated the date for her writing of "The Making of Americans" was 1906–1908. Her biographer has uncovered evidence that it actually began in 1902 and did not end until 1911. Stein compared her work to James Joyce's "Ulysses" and to Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". Her critics were less enthusiastic about it. Stein wrote the bulk of the novel between 1903 and 1911, and evidence from her manuscripts suggests three major periods of revision during that time. The manuscript remained mostly hidden from public view until 1924 when, at the urging of Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford agreed to publish excerpts in the "transatlantic review". In 1925, the Paris-based Contact Press published a limited run of the novel consisting of 500 copies. A much-abridged edition was published by Harcourt Brace in 1934, but the full version remained out of print until Something Else Press republished it in 1966. In 1995, a new, definitive edition was published by Dalkey Archive Press with a foreword by William Gass.