Kate O'Flaherty was born into one of St. Louis's most prominent families. Although Kate O'Flaherty Chopin later said she was born in 1851, Emily Toth discovered during her research for her forthcoming biography of Chopin that the future writer's baptismal certificate lists her birthdate as 8 February 1850. Her Irish immigrant father, Thomas O'Flaherty, was a successful St. Louis merchant; her mother, Eliza Faris O'Flaherty, a beautiful and gracious daughter of one of the city's oldest and most aristocratic Creole families. Kate received her formal education at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis, where she was exposed to Catholic teachings and a French educational emphasis upon intellectual discipline. Her main interests were music, reading, and writing, though her commonplace book and the fable "Emancipation" are her only surviving writings from this early period. Between graduation in 1868 and marriage two years later Kate read ravenously, principally among the major...