Gone With the Wind - Bev Russell, Library Director
(This column appeared in the July 29, 2007, Star-Herald)
The Harry Potter phenomenon is so unusual that it is almost unique in publishing history. In my lifetime I have never seen anything like it. The only comparison I can make to Harry Potter would be the Beatle-mania of the 1960s. The recent publication of the seventh Harry Potter book and the debut of the fifth movie got me to thinking back over the years for a comparable situation. The closest I could come was "Gone With the Wind" in 1936. If Harry Potter is the Beatles, then "Gone With the Wind" was Elvis. This past week, I researched Margaret Mitchell’s "Gone With the Wind" and discovered a fascinating story.
Margaret Mitchell came from a long established Atlanta family. Her great-grandfather, a Methodist minister, performed the first marriage in Atlanta. Her grandfather served in the Confederate army. Margaret’s father obtained a $145,000 loan from Andrew Carnegie to build the Atlanta Public Library and was a co-founder of the Atlanta Historical Society. Her mother helped found the Atlanta women’s suffrage movement. In the early 20th Century the Civil War was a southern obsession, and Margaret (Peggy) grew up listening to tales of the war. In fact, she was 10 years old before she realized the South lost. Peggy Marsh (her married name) was a socially prominent woman, somewhat shy and lacking in self-confidence; however, she was well known in Atlanta society as a vibrant personality and wonderful conversationalist.
The writing of "Gone With the Wind" was an on again, off again project which covered the better part of a decade. She began writing when her husband, John Marsh, bought her a portable typewriter while she was recovering from a chronic leg injury. He had tired of carting books back and forth to the library for her and told her to write the Civil War stories, which fascinated her. Over the years she wrote many unconnected chapters, keeping them in separate manila envelopes. Because she did not want anyone to know what she was doing, she hid the envelopes under her bed, in storage closets or in cupboards with pots and pans. Peggy was so secretive about her writing that when people came to call at her house, she hurried around, hiding the typewriter and shoving envelopes under couch cushions. Margaret Mitchell never planned on publishing the novel, and when asked, denied she was writing it.
An editor friend of hers informed Harold Latham, Vice President of Macmillian Publishing Company, about the book. The friend told him, "If she can write the way she talks, it should be a honey." While in Atlanta, Latham decided to contact Peggy about the book. Initially she denied its existence; however, her husband persuaded her to hand over the book to Latham. He recalled that when Peggy Marsh came to his hotel, he saw a little lady, seated in the lobby beside the biggest manuscript he had ever seen. The envelopes reached to her shoulder. "Take this thing before I change my mind," she said. Later, getting cold feet, she tried to induce him to return the novel.
Latham purchased a large suitcase to take the manuscript back to New York. It was one of the most difficult manuscripts he ever read. The pages were yellow, moldy, crumbling, and covered with penciled corrections. In spite of the gaps in the narrative, the uneven writing style, and the difficulty in just reading it, Latham smelled a best seller. If Margaret would finish it, Macmillan would publish it.
Although hesitant to publish the book, she finally agreed when someone suggested to her that the South’s side of the Civil War had never been told. Mitchell spent six months finishing and polishing the novel. During those six months she checked her historical details, wrote the opening chapter, changed her heroine’s name from Pansy to Scarlett, decided how Frank Kennedy would die, and titled the book.
Hoping to sell 5,000 copies, Mitchell was astounded when the Book of the Month Club picked it for their July selection. Macmillian’s original printing in May 1936 was 10,000 copies at $3.00 a piece. Within a year one million copies were sold, and Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize.
Unfortunately, Margaret Mitchell did not enjoy her fame and fortune. If anything, it made her more reclusive. She shunned the limelight and never wrote again. In 1949 while crossing a street with her husband at her side, she was hit by a car and died five days later. Margaret Mitchell, a little woman who wrote a big story, is buried in an unassuming Atlanta grave.
(Information for this articles was taken from "The Art of Gone With the Wind: The Making of a Legend" by Judy Cameron and Paul J. Christman and "GWTW: The Making of Gone With the Wind" by Gavin Lambert.)
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