Chopin, Kate [O'flaherty]
Chopin, Kate [O'flaherty]( 1851–1904),St. Louis author, from her marriage to a Louisiana Creole until his death (1882) lived in New Orleans and on a Louisiana cotton plantation. Returning to her native city, she began to write tales for children and the local-color stories for which she is noted. At Fault (1890) is an undistinguished novel of Creole life in the Cane River section of central Louisiana. Her importance in the local-color movement depends primarily, however, on her interpretations of Creole and Cajun life in her collections of short stories and anecdotes, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). These carefully polished tales are delicately objective in treatment and marked by a poignant restraint of which perhaps the greatest example is Désirée's Baby in the former volume. Mrs. Chopin's last novel, The Awakening (1899), caused a storm of criticism that ended her literary career because...
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