Because it was so far ahead of the times, The Awakening has had a turbulent history. It was rejected when it appeared in 1899, forgotten for thirty years, rejected again in the 1930s and forgotten for another generation, rediscovered in the 1950s and 1960s by scholars in Europe and the USA, embraced in the 1970s by feminists in the USA and the UK - and then accepted ecstatically by teachers, students and readers of all kinds. Today, it is reprinted in dozens of editions and textbooks, as well as in several translations, and is one of America's most widely read, most widely loved classic books. It took 100 years for all this to play out, and there were contradictions along the way. Not all readers rejected the novel or forgot it, not all feminists liked it, and not everyone today is pleased with its omnipresence in bookstores and classrooms - but scholars are virtually unanimous about the ups and downs of its reception. We should, however, distinguish between the history of The Awakening and that of Kate Chopin's short stories. The 100 or so stories Chopin wrote throughout the 1890s were, by almost any writer's standards, more than merely accepted in her own time. Many of them appeared in America's most prestigious magazines, including Vogue, the Century, Youth's Companion, the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's Young People. Several were syndicated by the American Press Association. Twenty-three were published by Houghton Mifflin in Bayou Folk (1894) and twenty-one others by Way and Williams in A Night in Acadie (1897), and both anthologies were well received by critics across the country who praised the regional charm of the stories, their local colour, their realistic treatment of Louisiana Creole and Acadian life. When The Awakening appeared in 1899, Kate Chopin had every reason to think that her national reputation would ensure the success of her novel.