The nineteenth-century American author Kate Chopin (née O’Flaherty) came from St Louis, Missouri. Her father hailed from Ireland; her mother’s family was of French extraction. In 1870 the flirtatious and much-admired ‘Irish beauty’ married Oscar Chopin, a handsome, wealthy cottonbroker. Her behaviour seemed shockingly unconventional to many Louisiana residents. Kate arrayed herself in the height of fashion and openly smoked Cuban cigarettes. Financial difficulties resulted in a move, in 1879, to Cloutierville, where Oscar ran a general store until his death three years later. Disapproval of her scandalous clandestine affair with a neighbour, Albert Sampite, led Chopin to return to St Louis, and she decided to support her six children by writing.
At first her poems, tales and sketches appeared in local journals but some of her stories were published in national magazines such as Vogue and the Atlantic Monthly. Two compilations, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), received favourable critical reviews. Although Chopin was prolific and successful, her novella The Awakening (1899) caused controversy.
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