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 American
author of the enormously popular novel GONE WITH WIND (1936), the
story of the American Civil War and Reconstruction as seen from
the Southern point of view. The book was adapted to the highly popular
film in 1939, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. At the novel's
opening in 1861, Scarlett O'Hara is sixteen-year-old girl. In the
twelve-year span of the story she experiences Secession, Civil War,
Reconstruction, as well as romance, love, marriage, and motherhood.
"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized
it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her
face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother,
a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her
florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of
chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch
of hazel, starred with briskly black lashes and slightly tilted
at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward,
cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin -
that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded
with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia sun."
(from Gone With the Wind)
Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta. Her mother was a suffragist
and father a prominent lawyer and president of the Atlanta Historical
Society. Mitchell grew up listening to stories about old Atlanta
and the battles the Confederate Army had fought there during the
American Civil War. She graduated from the local Washington Seminary
and started in 1918 to study medicine at Smith College. In her youth
Mitchell adopted her mother's feminist leanings, which clashed with
her father's conservatism - but she lived fully the wild times of
the Jazz age and wrote about them in non-fiction.
 When
Mitchell's mother died in 1919, she returned to home to keep house
for her father and brother. In 1922 she married Berrien Kinnard
Upshaw. The disastrous marriage was climaxed by spousal rape and
was annulled 1924. Mitchell started her career as a journalist in
1922 under the name Peggy Mitchell, writing for the Atlanta Journal.
Four years later she resigned after an ankle injury. Her second
husband, John Robert Marsh, an advertising manager, encouraged Mitchell
in her writing aspirations. From 1926 to 1929 she wrote Gone
With the Wind, dressing in boys' trousers while writing and
combining stories of Civil War heard in childhood to historical
material. The outcome, a thousand-page novel, was not published
until 1935 when she first showed it to a travelling book editor,
who visited Atlanta in search of new material. The work broke sales
records and was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize in 1937.
Although Gone with the Wind brought Mitchell fame and tremendous
fortune, it seems to have brought little joy. Chased by the press
and public, the author and her husband lived modestly and travelled
rarely. Also questions about the book's literary status, melodrama
and racism led to critical neglect that continued well in the 1960s.
The story is told from a Southern woman's point of view and paints
a vivid picture of Southern life through the lives of two families,
and their slaves, friends, and relatives.
"Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient
time for any of them."
(from Gone With the Wind)
 During
World War II Mitchell was a volunteer selling war bonds and volunteer
for the American Red Cross. She was named honorary citizen of Vimoutiers,
France, in 1949, for helping the city obtain American aid after
WW II. Mitchell died in Atlanta on August 16, 1949 - she was accidentally
struck by a speeding car. Authorized sequel for Gone with the
Wind, entitled Scarlett and written by Alexandra Ripley, appeared
in 1992. In the story Scarlett journeys to Ireland with her children
and there meets Rhett Butler again. LOST LAYSEN, a lost novella
by Mitchell, written when she was 16, and given to her close friend,
was published in 1995. The romantic story is set on a South Pacific
island.
For further reading: Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: The
Author of 'Gone With the Wind' 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); 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)
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