1900-1949
Margaret Mitchell
...There was a land of
Cavaliers and Cotton fields
Called the Old South...
Here in this pretty world
gallantry took its last bow
here was the last to be seen
of knights and their ladies fair...
of Master and of slave.
Look for it only in books
for it is no more than a
dream remembered...
A civilization
gone with the wind...
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell's Gone With the Wind describes a world very much like the one this headstrong flapper grew up in. She was born in Atlanta on November 8, 1900, the daughter of Mary Isabelle Stephens, Irish-Catholic, and Eugene Muse Mitchell, Scotch-Irish and French Huguenot. By the time Margaret was twelve the family, which had moved a number of times, ended up back in Atlanta, on Peachtree Street; and she was enrolled in a private school. Her nickname was 'Peggy'. There she wrestled with becoming a lady and behaving herself. When WWI came along, she was dating Clifford Henry, went off to war and died in France. In 1919 her mother died during an influenza epidemic and she dropped out of college to take care of her father and oversee her older brother, Stephens.
By the age of 22, Margaret had two serious boyfriends, Berrien Upshaw, nicknamed 'Red', and John R. Marsh, a newspaper man. Red, who was a flamboyant ex-football player and self-professed bootlegger, won her over; and they were married in September, 1922. But in no time they were in trouble financially, and Margaret went to work for the Atlanta Journal, where John Marsh just happened to be an editor. In October of 1924 she divorced Upshaw and, not long after that, married Marsh, who had become her mentor.
Gone With the Wind was published in June, 1936, a blockbuster to end all blockbusters. The following year Margaret was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and on December 15, 1939, the world descended upon Atlanta to see Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in person at the premiere in Loew's Grand Theater. And, of course, Margaret was there in all of her glory.
The thousand-page novel had taken her the better part of three years, from 1926 to 1929, to write. Macmillan published it and placed a $3 price tag on it.
Margaret (Peggy) and John Marsh were living in what she called the Dump, on Peachtree Street; and, except for all the attention and bother they got from the world press and sight-seers, it was a good time for them. It came to an end on August 11, 1949, when Margaret was struck by a taxicab while crossing Peachtree at 13th Street. She died five days later and was buried in Oakland Cemetery, with kinfolk.
There had been no other blockbusters, but see below for other books and writings by and about her:
Also by Margaret Mitchell:
Margaret Mitchell, Reporter (64 of her newspaper columns from The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, written between 1922 and 1926. Pub. in 2000)
Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings by Margaret Mitchell (Published in 2000)
I Want to Be Famous: The Writings of a Young Margaret Mitchell (Published 2000)
"Her Byline Was Peggy Mitchell" (Published September, 1991)
Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" Letters (1976, Edited by Richard Harwell)
Margaret Mitchell, A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to A. Edee 1919-21(1985, Edited by Jane Bonner)
Lost Laysen (A lost novella by Mitchell, written when she was 16, and given to a close friend, finally published in 1995 by Paratisisaari.. It is a romantic tale set on a South Pacific island.)
Related readings about Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind:
Scarlett, the authorized sequel to Gone With the Wind, written by Alexandra Ripley, published in 1992. In it Scarlett travels to Ireland and meets Rhett Butler.
Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta by Finis Farr (1965)
The Road to Tara by Anne Edwards (1983)
Gone with the Wind as Book and Film, ed. by Richard Harwell (1983)
Recasting: Gone with the Wind in the American Culture, by D.A. Pyron (1983)
I Remember Margaret Mitchell, by Yolande Gwin (1986)
Scarlett's Women: Gone with the Wind and Its Female Fans, by Helen Taylor (1989)
Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, by Darden Asbury Pyron (1991)
Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story behind Gone with the Wind, by Marianne Walker (1993)
"Frankly, My Dear...": Gone with the Wind Memorabilia, by Herb Bridges (1995)
The Irish Roots of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, by David O'Connell (1996)
The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall's (2001) (A parodic sequel to Mitchell's work. The protagonist is Cynara, the illegitimate daughter of Scarlett's father and Mammy)
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