Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell (born November 8, 1900, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died August 16, 1949, Atlanta) was the American author and journalist who wrote Gone With the Wind, a novel that achieved enormous popularity after its publication in 1936. It earned her a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and it was the source of the Oscar-winning film of the same name released in 1939. Mitchell’s romanticized depiction of the South during the Civil War era, particularly her disregard for the realities of slavery, has drawn criticism. Gone With the Wind is the only book by Mitchell that was published during her lifetime.

Early life, education, and marriages

Mitchell grew up in a family of storytellers who regaled her with firsthand accounts of their experiences during the Civil War, which had ended just 35 years before her birth. An active tomboy, she played in the earthen fortifications that still surrounded her hometown of Atlanta and often went horseback riding with Confederate veterans. She also was a voracious reader and wrote numerous stories and plays throughout her youth.

Mitchell graduated from Atlanta’s Washington Seminary in 1918 and enrolled at Smith College in Massachusetts. When her mother died the following year, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to keep house for her father and brother. Bored with her domestic duties and the Atlanta social scene, she characterized herself as a “dynamo going to waste.” In 1921 she caused a scandal by performing a risqué dance at a local debutante ball.

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In 1922 Mitchell wed Berrien Upshaw, but the marriage quickly soured amid allegations of his alcoholism and physical abusiveness. They separated, and with the assistance of John Marsh, who had been best man at her wedding, Mitchell accepted a position as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. In the summer of 1925, Mitchell and Marsh married.

The origins and publication of Gone With the Wind

In the spring of 1926, an ankle injury, aggravated by arthritis, led her to resign from the newspaper. She turned her attention to writing a novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction from a Southern point of view. She set the story in her native Georgia because she knew so much of its history from the family tales she had heard growing up; she also felt that the state of Virginia had received too much attention in previous Civil War narratives. As originally drafted, Mitchell’s novel featured a character named Pansy O’Hara, a spoiled and strong-willed coquette who comes of age just as her family’s life on a cotton plantation is ravaged by war. Over a period of nine years, Mitchell worked at her novel sporadically, composing episodes out of sequence and often drafting multiple versions of single scenes.

The manuscript came to the attention of the Macmillan publishing company through the recommendation of its associate editor Lois Dwight Cole, a close friend of Mitchell’s. Cole had not yet read the unnamed and unfinished novel but had confidence in Mitchell’s storytelling ability and convinced Harold Latham, Macmillan’s editor in chief, that it was sure to be worth reading. On a visit to Atlanta in the spring of 1935, Latham persuaded Mitchell to submit her work in progress for consideration.

Although Mitchell’s submission consisted of a disorganized collection of draft chapters, the Macmillan company saw potential in her writing and, that summer, offered her a publishing contract. Underestimating the work that would be required to complete the novel, Mitchell agreed to have it ready for publication the following spring. She spent the next seven months in a frantic state as she endeavored to complete the narrative, fact-check each of the historical details referenced in the novel, and decide on a title. Macmillan liked Tomorrow Is Another Day, while Mitchell preferred Gone With the Wind, based on a line in Ernest Dowson’s poem “Cynara” (formally, “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae,” published in 1891). She also was eager to find a better name for Pansy and proposed Scarlett as a replacement. Cole initially rejected the suggestion, but she eventually agreed to let it stand.

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Mitchell’s novel was published as Gone With the Wind on June 30, 1936. Scarlett’s story of survival amid the brutalities of war and its aftermath struck a chord with readers around the world. Fifty thousand copies were sold in one day; within six months, one million copies had been printed. The book went on to sell more copies than any other novel in U.S. publishing history. By the turn of the 21st century, more than 30 million copies had been sold worldwide in more than 40 languages.

Mitchell’s resentment toward the film adaptation

Within a month of the novel’s release, Mitchell sold the motion-picture rights to producer David O. Selznick for $50,000, the highest amount ever paid to a debut novelist at the time. Mitchell later bristled at rumors that Selznick had been willing to pay $100,000 and that other producers had offered to acquire the rights from him for $150,000. She also was displeased about the shoddy wording of the contract she had signed with Selznick. Though unwilling to admit she had made a mistake by selling the rights so quickly, Mitchell resented the situation. She also worried that the film would not be true to her novel or live up to public expectations. To Selznick’s dismay, she declined to be publicly associated with the movie’s production.

The film, starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, after an unprecedented period of advance promotion, including the highly publicized search for an actress to play Scarlett. The movie was an immediate box-office smash. It won 8 of the 13 Academy Awards for which it was nominated as well as two honorary awards; Leigh, the director Victor Fleming, and actress Hattie McDaniel were among those who received Oscars. In gratitude, Selznick offered to give Mitchell his Academy Award statuette for best picture. She declined, but, in 1942, she did accept a bonus payment of $50,000 that he sent her as a gesture of appreciation. For almost three decades, numerous rereleases in the United States and abroad kept the film atop the list of all-time moneymakers.

Withdrawal from public view and copyright activism

After the book’s initial launch, Mitchell declined to make any promotional appearances and, beginning in 1937, to sign any more copies of the book (subject to occasional exceptions for foreign editions). As a result, she developed a reputation for being a recluse overwhelmed by her celebrity status. In reality, Mitchell simply disliked the spotlight and felt her time was better spent responding to the thousands of fan letters she received and managing what quickly became an international publishing empire.

Mitchell also spent a substantial portion of her time pursuing legal actions against foreign publishers who produced unauthorized or substandard editions of the novel. Her efforts to protect her literary rights overseas called attention to the inadequacy of copyright protections for American authors and inspired Congress to enact legislative improvements.

For many years after Gone With the Wind’s release, Mitchell insisted that, because of the disruption the book caused in her life, she had no intention of ever writing again. By the late 1940s, though, much of the excitement had waned, and she was considering ideas for a new novel.

Death

On August 11, 1949, Mitchell and her husband were crossing a street in Atlanta on their way to a movie theater when she was struck by a speeding car. She suffered extensive internal injuries and a skull fracture, and she died five days later. Her death was lamented in newspapers around the world; U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman lauded Mitchell as “an artist who gave the world an eternal book.”

Mitchell’s afterlife

Decades after Mitchell’s death, her estate authorized novelist Alexandra Ripley to write Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1991), which was an international best seller but panned by critics. In 2001 Mitchell’s estate, claiming copyright infringement, sued to block the publication of The Wind Done Gone (2001), a novel told from the perspective of a formerly enslaved person that its author, Alice Randall, described as “a critique of Gone With the Wind in the form of a parody.” The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta, citing the First Amendment, ruled that the book could be published, and the case was eventually settled out of court. Mitchell’s estate later authorized two additional derivative novels: Rhett Butler’s People (2007) and Ruth’s Journey (2014), both of which were written by historical novelist Donald McCaig.

Mitchell achieved several posthumous honors, including induction into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000, and her house is today part of the Atlanta History Center. Her legacy has shifted as Gone With the Wind has been read, and watched, by successive generations. Mitchell’s novel presents readers with her representation of the American South and its people during a period when the United States split apart over the issue of slavery, was engulfed in years of civil war, witnessed the abolition of slavery and the freeing of its enslaved people, and faced the lasting aftermath of social, political, economic, and racial upheaval. The extent to which readers believe Gone With the Wind has, and has not, accurately recorded this period of American history—and what duty they believe Mitchell had to do so—determines how they assess Mitchell herself.