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Kate Chopin was born on the 8th of February 1850, from a french mother and an Irish father. The later died five years after Kate's birth. Chopin was consequently raised into a world where women where predominant, and she consumed the works of famous writers, such as Charles Dickens, the Brontës or Jane Austen.
She went to a girl's catholic school until she was eighteen years old and her teachers where nuns ; this accentuated her feminist point of view, that would flourish later in her writings.
Chopin then met and married a man named Oscar Chopin, who was French and worked as a cotton factor. After their wedding in 1870, the couple lived in New Orleans, and six children were born of their union.
After the failure of Oscar's business, the family was forced to move again, this time in a little village named Cloutierville, in Louisiana. There, the family of Chopin's husband gave them a small land. In this village, Kate Chopin would encounter many locals, who later became the subject of her writings.
When Oscar died of malaria in 1882, Kate Chopin started to run the family plantation and store, which was not something many widows did in this period of time. Two years later, she took her children and moved back to the town of her childhood: St Louis.
One year after this change of town, Chopin began to write, first a music piece, then a poem titled "It Might Be", in 1889. From then on, she focused on fiction and wrote avidly in this genre.
She also created a literary salon, the first of its type in St Louis, where readers could come and exchange about literature. This allowed her to meet some publishers and critics, who contributed to the publication and the appreciation of her works.
During her career as a writer, Kate Chopin wrote nearly hundred short stories, one play, and three novels.
Her first novel was At Fault (1889), and two short stories collections where published in 1894 and 1897: Bayou Folk and A Night In Acadie. All of these works depicted the life in Louisiana and were at the time well received by critics and by the public.
In 1899, the publication of her novel The Awakening resulted in outrage, due to the actions of the main character and her lack of remorse. Combined with health problems, her output started to slow down, and Chopin died in 1904 of a cerebral haemorrhage.
The work of Kate Chopin fell into obscurity a few years after her death. Almost 70 years after her death, the public attention was renewed when a critical biography about Chopin was written by Per Seversted. Her complete works were then published again, and inspired the feminist movement from the 60's, who contributed to its dissemination and to a new fame for the author. The works of Kate Chopin are today part of the American literature canon.
You will find them all in this meticulously compiled edition.
This book contains the following works :
Bayou Folk, a short stories collection.
A Night in Acadie, another short stories collection.
At Fault, a novel.
The Awakening, a novel, followed by short stories.
Previously uncollected short stories.
BAYOU FOLK
By
KATE CHOPIN
BAYOU FOLK.
- Writer
