Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis. She did not begin to write until she was thirtysix years old. Up to that time, her life gave no hint of either literary talent or literary ambition. Yet after the publication of her first stories in 1889, she enjoyed ten years of a productive, serious, and fairly successful career. Her first novel,At Fault (1890), had difficulty finding a publisher, so she brought it out at her own expense and sent review copies to important journals. Her short stories close to a hundred of them were published for the most part in prestigious national magazines. They gave her a solid reputation as a gifted 'local color' writer that is, an author specializing in the depiction of a particular region of the country and its inhabitants. From these many stories, she culled two wellreviewed collections: Bayou Folk in 1894 andA Night in Acadie in 1897.The Awakening, now her bestknown work, appeared in 1899.Critics of Chopin's own day disapproved of the sexual frankness ofThe Awakening and were especially disturbed by the narrator's neutrality toward the unconventional behavior of Edna Pontellier, the heroine. All reviews of the novel were unfavorable. Soon after this setback, a planned third collection of short stories was rejected by a publisher, and Kate Chopin essentially ceased to write. In poor health, she died some five years afterThe Awakening appeared. She was only fiftythree.
