Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American writer who began publishing in her late thirties, after her husband's death left her with six children and a failing business in Louisiana. Her stories of Creole and Cajun life were widely admired, but the frank treatment of a woman's independence in The Awakening (1899) drew such hostile reviews that she wrote little afterwards. The novel was recovered in the 1960s and is now her most read work.