1941
"The Dump", now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum
Margaret Mitchell (1941) in her Red Cross uniform aboard the USS Atlanta (CL-51)
Mitchell's grave in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta
(Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United Sta...)
Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United States in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877). The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion wherein seven southern states initially, including Georgia, have declared their secession from the United States (the "Union") and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"), after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The Union refuses to accept secession and no compromise is found as war approaches.
https://www.amazon.com/Gone-with-the-Wind/dp/B002RSRPS8/?tag=2022091-20
1936
(Lost Laysen was first published in 1996 by the Scribner i...)
Lost Laysen was first published in 1996 by the Scribner imprint of Simon & Schuster. Edited by Debra Freer, the book includes an extensive introduction telling the story of Mitchell and Angel's relationship, complete with photographs and reproductions of some of her letters. The protagonists of the novella are presumably based on real people - heroine Courtenay Ross, although named after Mitchell's friend, has Mitchell's personality, and Billy Duncan is probably based on Henry Angel. The love triangle also foreshadows the one in Mitchell's more famous work, Gone with the Wind, where a man is in love with a woman he has no hope of winning over.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684824280/?tag=2022091-20
1996
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. She was born into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isabel "May Belle" (or "Maybelle") Stephens, was a suffragist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.
Mitchell grew up in a family of storytellers who regaled her with firsthand accounts of their experiences during the American 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.
Margaret Mitchell graduated from Atlanta’s Washington Seminary in 1918 and enrolled at Smith College in Massachusetts. When her mother died the following year, Margaret 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 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. Margaret Mitchell set the story in her native Georgia because she knew so much of its history from the family tales she had heard growing up. As originally drafted, the novel featured 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, Margaret 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 Margaret 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, Margaret Mitchell agreed to have it ready for publication the following spring. She spent the next seven months in a frantic state as she endeavoured 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 she 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.
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.
Within a month of the novel’s release, Margaret 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. She later bristled at rumours 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, Margaret 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 and, at the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony, won 8 of the 13 Oscars for which it was nominated and two special awards. In gratitude, Selznick offered to give the author his Academy Award for best picture. She declined but, in 1942, 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.
For many years after Gone With the Wind’s release, Margaret 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. On August 11, 1949, Margaret Mitchell was crossing the street on her way to a movie theatre when she was struck by a speeding car. She suffered extensive internal injuries, including a skull fracture, and died five days later.
(Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United Sta...)
1936(Lost Laysen was first published in 1996 by the Scribner i...)
1996Margaret Mitchell mother's family was Irish Catholic.
Mitchell's parents were influential in her life. Her father offered more criticism than praise, which drove Mitchell's independence, and her mother spoke to both her children directly, giving them advice on matters of drinking and sex. Margaret Mitchell became a suffragist under the influence of her mother. Also it may be said that her philosophy was made up by the case system. That is a system of studying law where you get no rules and no text, but you study cases that you have been tried and decided and you find out how they turn out. Afterwards you discuss them and make up rules yourself. Margaret's philosophy was a "case" philosophy. She didn't try to make people fit a rule.
Quotations:
"After all, tomorrow is another day."
"With enough courage, you can do without a reputation."
"Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is."
Margaret Mitchell had a strong personality and was a gritty, confident, strong woman.
Quotes from others about the person
A local gossip columnist, who wrote under the name Polly Peachtree, described Mitchell's love life in a 1922 column: "...she has in her brief life, perhaps, had more men really, truly 'dead in love' with her, more honest-to-goodness suitors than almost any other girl in Atlanta."
Medora Field Perkerson, who hired Mitchell said: "There had been some skepticism on the Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy came to work as a reporter. Debutantes slept late in those days and didn't go in for jobs."
In 1922 Margaret 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.
Eugene Muse Mitchell was an attorney.
b.1896
Russell Crawford Mitchell enlisted in the Confederate States Army on June 24, 1861, and served in Hood's Texas Brigade. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg, demoted for "inefficiency," and detailed as a nurse in Atlanta. After the Civil War, he made a large fortune supplying lumber for the rapid rebuilding of Atlanta. Russell Mitchell had thirteen children from two wives; the eldest was Eugene, who graduated from the University of Georgia Law School.
Annie Stephens was quite a character, both vulgar and a tyrant. After gaining control of her father Philip Fitzgerald's money after he died, she splurged on her younger daughters, including Margaret's mother, and sent them to finishing school in the north.
John Stephens had also emigrated from Ireland and became a Captain in the Confederate States Army. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together; the seventh child was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell. May Belle Stephens had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education at the Atlanta Female Institute.
Philip Fitzgerald emigrated from Ireland and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had one son and seven daughters with his wife, Elenor.
