Kate Chopin

Katherine Chopin (also US: ; née O'Flaherty; February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and she is among the most frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage. She is best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening.

Of maternal French and paternal Irish descent, Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She married and moved with her husband to New Orleans. They later lived in the country in Cloutierville, Louisiana. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in national magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics.

Her major works were two short story collections and two novels. The collections are Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories included "Désirée's Baby" (1893), a tale of an interracial relationship in antebellum Louisiana, "The Story of an Hour" (1894), and "The Storm" (written 1898, first published 1969). ("The Storm" is a sequel to her "At the 'Cadian Ball" (1892), which appeared in Bayou Folk, her first collection of short stories.) Chopin's two novels, At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), are set in New Orleans and nearby Grand Isle. The characters in her stories are usually residents of Louisiana, and many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Many of her works are set in Natchitoches in north-central Louisiana, a region where she lived.

Within a decade of her death, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote "some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius."

But by the 1950s she was practically forgotten by both literary scholars and the general public. Her re-discovery required a literary critic, a biography and collected edition by a scholar, praise from a New York Times columnist and publication in a mass-market paperback.