This landmark feminist novel, first published in 1899, remains startlingly relevant -- Judy Blume Chopin's deceptively slight novel is the kind of book revolutions are made of * Harper's Bazaar * A Creole Bovary is this little novel of Miss Chopin's -- Willa Cather Kate Chopin is a pioneer in the treatment of sexuality in American literature . . . She does not speak only to women, but she speaks most powerfully about them * The Times * From the first pages of The Awakening we are pulled into territory that feels utterly current and familiar, with an undercurrent more dangerous than romantic comedy * Guardian *

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. Readers and critics were scandalized by The Awakening when it was first published, but it is now regarded as among the boldest and earliest examples of feminist fiction. It is published here with a selection of Chopin's strikingly perceptive short stories and introduced by Dr J. Michelle Coghlan, a specialist in American literature. In The Awakening, Edna Pontellier is on holiday with her husband and two young children at a sleepy resort town on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. There, she is pursued by the charming and unmarried Robert Lebrun. Edna doesn't play by the rules; flirtation turns into an affair that awakens in Edna her desire to break away from her passionless marriage, her children and the strict conventions of nineteenth-century society.