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Kate Chopin: Complete Novels & Stories

At Fault | Bayou Folk | A Night in Acadie | The Awakening | uncollected stories More

Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert

“Chopin is not, and never has been, a writer who is easily summed up. Here we get everything—the complete stories and the novels—in one tidy, well-presented package… Chopin’s richness is best swallowed in great quantities, and this new edition makes that possible.”— Buffalo News

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week “A Point at Issue!” Kate Chopin
February 8, 2024

Story of the Week Kate Chopin, “A Visit to Avoyelles”
April 13, 2023

News Adopt this book: Kate Chopin: Complete Novels & Stories
August 26, 2022

From ruined Louisiana plantations to bustling, cosmopolitan New Orleans, Kate Chopin wrote with unflinching honesty about propriety and its strictures, the illusions of love and the realities of marriage, and the persistence of a past scarred by slavery and war. Her stories of fiercely independent women challenged contemporary mores as much by their sensuousness as their politics, and today seem decades ahead of their time. Now, The Library of America collects all of Chopin’s novels and stories as never before in one authoritative volume.

The explosive novel At Fault (1890) centers on a love triangle between a strong-willed young widow, a stiff St. Louis businessman, and the man’s alcoholic wife. In the two story collections Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), Chopin transforms the popular local color sketch into taut, perfectly calibrated tales that portray Louisiana bayou cultures with sympathetic insight and an eye to the unresolved conflicts of a South reeling from the Civil War.

In The Awakening (1899), the novel that scandalized many of her contemporaries and effectively ended her public career as a writer, Chopin tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a restless, unsatisfied woman who embarks on a quixotic search for fulfillment. Rendered with masterful precision, detachment, and a suggestive ambiguity that defies easy judgments about Edna’s actions, The Awakening is the novel that restored Chopin to literary prominence after its rediscovery by critics in the 1960s and 1970s.

The volume also includes all the stories not collected by Chopin, including those meant for A Vocation and a Voice, a projected volume that her publisher canceled in 1900; stories that Chopin never tried to publish, such as the erotically daring “The Storm”; and “Ti Frère,” “A Horse Story,” and “Alexandre’s Wonderful Experience,” three stories which were found in 1992 in a long-lost cache of Chopin’s papers.

Sandra M. Gilbert, volume editor, is professor of English emerita at the University of California, Davis. She has published numerous volumes of criticism, a memoir, and six collections of verse; most recently she is the author of Acts of Attention: The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence (1990) and Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999 (2000).

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is available for adoption in the Guardian of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Story of the Week “A Point at Issue!” Kate Chopin
February 8, 2024

Story of the Week Kate Chopin, “A Visit to Avoyelles”
April 13, 2023

News Adopt this book: Kate Chopin: Complete Novels & Stories
August 26, 2022

Story of the Week Kate Chopin, “Miss McEnders”
February 8, 2022

Story of the Week Kate Chopin, “A Shameful Affair”
February 8, 2021
Table of Contents

At Fault

Bayou Folk
A No-Account Creole
In and Out of Old Natchitoches
In Sabine
A Very Fine Fiddle
Beyond the Bayou
Old Aunt Peggy
The Return of Alcibiade
A Rude Awakening
The Bênitous’ Slave
Désirée’s Baby
A Turkey Hunt
Madame Célestin’s Divorce
Love on the Bon-Dieu
Loka
Boulôt and Boulotte
For Marse Chouchoute
A Visit to Avoyelles
A Wizard from Gettysburg
Ma’ame Pélagie
At the ‘Cadian Ball
La Belle Zoraïde
A Gentleman of Bayou Têche
A Lady of Bayou St. John

A Night in Acadie
A Night in Acadie
Athénaïse
After the Winter
Polydore
Regret
A Matter of Prejudice
Caline
A Dresden Lady in Dixie
Nég Créol
The Lilies
Azélie
Mamouche
A Sentimental Soul
Dead Men’s Shoes
At Chênière Caminada
Odalie Misses Mass
Cavanelle
Tante Cat’rinette
A Respectable Woman
Ripe Figs
Ozème’s Holiday

The Awakening

Uncollected Stories
Emancipation. A Life Fable
Wiser Than a God
A Point at Issue!
Miss Witherwell’s Mistake
With the Violin
Mrs.Mobry’s Reason
The Going Away of Liza
The Maid of Saint Phillippe
A Shameful Affair
A Harbinger
Doctor Chevalier’s Lie
An Embarrassing Position: Comedy in One Act
Croque-Mitaine
A Little Free-Mulatto
Miss McEnders
An Idle Fellow
The Story of an Hour
Lilacs
The Night Came Slowly
Juanita
The Kiss
Her Letters
Two Summers and Two Souls
The Unexpected
Two Portraits
Fedora
Vagabonds
Madame Martel’s Christmas Eve
The Recovery
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Aunt Lympy’s Interference
The Blind Man
Ti Frère
A Vocation and a Voice
A Mental Suggestion
Suzette
The Locket
A Morning Walk
An Egyptian Cigarette
A Family Affair
Elizabeth Stock’s One Story
A Horse Story
The Storm
The Godmother
A Little Country Girl
A Reflection
Ti Démon
A December Day in Dixie
Alexandre’s Wonderful Experience
The Gentleman from New Orleans
Charlie
The White Eagle
The Wood-Choppers
Polly
The Impossible Miss Meadows

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ISBN: 978-1-93108221-1 1075 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 136 Library of America Series

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