Kate Chopin has emerged as one of the most significant American writers of the nineteenth century. Though her works typically reflect the language and customs of the Louisiana of her memories, they also make universal comments about women, men, and human relationships. Best known as the author of "The Awakening" (1899), she also wrote nearly a hundred short stories, essays, poems, reviews, and a play. While the contemporary response to her works was sometimes negative, much recent critical debate concerns her lasting place in the American literary canon, with some scholars placing "The Awakening" on the same level as Melville's "Moby-Dick."

The last thirty years have witnessed heightened interest in Chopin's works. This bibliography provides a comprehensive survey of critical work on Chopin published between 1976 and 1998, with some coverage of 1999. Included are annotated entries for books, articles, dissertations, biographical studies, and bibliographical works. Extensive indexes offer easy access to the entries. In addition, the volume includes a biographical sketch, a review of trends in Chopin scholarship, and a textual history.

Celebrated for her depictions of life among Louisiana's Creole and Cajun peoples, Kate Chopin (1850-1904) is today seen as a major figure in southern literature. Her short stories and her last novel, The Awakening (1899), are widely read and studied. Unjustly neglected, however, is her first novel, At Fault, which Chopin published in 1890 at her own expense. This edition of At Fault--the first printing to appear since Chopin's Complete Works was issued in 1969--now makes the book available to a wide audience.
The novel centers on Therese Lafirme, a widow who owns and runs a plantation in post-Civil War Louisiana. She encounters David Hosmer, who buys timber rights to her property to secure raw materials for his newly constructed sawmill. When David remarries, a love triangle develops between David, Fanny (his alcoholic wife), and Therese, who tries to balance her strong moral sensibility against her growing love for David. In depicting these relationships, Chopin acutely dramatizes the conflict between growing industrialism and the agrarian traditions of the Old South--as well as the changes to the land and the society that inevitably resulted from that conflict.
Editors Suzanne Disheroon Green and David J. Caudle provide meticulous annotations to the text of At Fault, facilitating the reader's understanding of the complex and exotic culture and language of nineteenth-century Louisiana. Also included is a substantial body of supporting materials thatcontextualize the novel, ranging from a summary of critical responses to materials illuminating the economic, social, historical, and religious influences on Chopin's texts.
The Editors: Suzanne Disheroon Green is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. She is the co-author, with David J. Caudle, of Kate Chopin: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Works, and co-editor with Lisa Abney, of the forthcoming Songs of the New South: Writing Contemporary Louisiana
David J. Caudle, who is completing his doctorate at the University of North Texas, has published essays and book chapters dealing with American literature and linguistic approaches to literature.