"Désirée's Baby," which for decades was the only piece of writing for which Chopin was known, was first published in the inaugural issue of Vogue in 1893. The following year, it was reprinted in Bayou Folk, Chopin's first collection of short stories. Chopin' s publisher marketed it as "several tales drawn from life among the Acadians and Creoles of Louisiana." The collection included character sketches, stories about domestic dramas, stories about defiant women, as well as children's tales.

The original print run of Bayou Folk was a respectable 1,250 and over the next sixteen years, it was reprinted several times. That the land about which Chopin wrote intrigued Americans was immediately obvious from the first review to appear in the New York Times (reprinted in Emily Toth's biography). Under the heading, "Living Tales From Acadian Life," the reviewer devoted all but two sentences of...