Gone With The Wind

By
Margaret Mitchell

Published by The MacMillan Co.
New York
October printing, 1936

Hardcover.
Original cloth binding.
6" x 8.5"
1,037 Pages.

Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

An instant success upon its release in 1936, a year later Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer prize for her effort.

Set in the Atlanta , Georgia region during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, Mitchell's story exemplifies the proper writing of historical fiction, with painstaking accuracy of language, mannerisms, and morals. The war itself is also presented as it should be presented - in full color and with all its moral ambiguity, rather than the black-and-white presentation that so often is the norm in modern discourse.

Mitchell's painting of southern culture and the all-encompassing war serve as the background for one of the most poignant love stories ever written. Following the life and loves of the willful Scarlett O'Hara, the work delves straight into the meaning and nature of love. Torn between her now-married childhood love, Ashley, and the outcast Rhett Butler, and in dogged pursuit of financial success after the devastating war, Scarlett lives a life of emotion and passion that few fictional characters have rivalled.

In many ways, the novel makes an even greater impact than the famous film. Unhampered by censorship, the world that surrounds Scarlett in the book is more realistic than that presented in the movie - painful miscarriages, brothels, wounds and poverty fill Mitchell's picture of the post-war south and make Scarlett's character much stronger and of greater depth than as portrayed in the film.
Even so, the style is light and brisk, the language uncomplicated except in the heavy dialect of the blacks, and the story compelling.

"Gone with the Wind" is a great book, a great movie, and one of the greatest love stories ever told.

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Good Condition.
Some general light binding wear, a little wear at the binding edges.
The spine is darkened.
( see the photos )
The hinges are tight.
Old ink inscription on the front endpaper, " Estelle K. Parsons , October, 1936 "
No other writing.
No markings.
The pages are in very good condition.

Carefully packed for shipment to the buyer.

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Biographical Information:

Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

American author of the enormously popular novel GONE WITH WIND (1936), story about the Civil War and Reconstruction as seen from the Southern point of view. The book was adapted into a highly popular film in 1939, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. At the novel's opening in 1861, Scarlett O'Hara is a young girl. During the story she experiences Secession , the Civil War , Reconstruction , as well as three marriages 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 bristly 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 , Georgia on November 8th, 1900. 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. At the age of fifteen she wrote in her journal: "If I were a boy, I would try for West Point, if I could make it, or well I'd be a prize fighter - anything fpr the thrills."
Mitchell 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 Jazz age and wrote about it in nonfiction.

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 annulled 1924. Mitchell started her career as a journalist in 1922 under the name Peggy Mitchell, writing articles, interviews, sketches, and book reviews 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. The outcome, a thousand page novel, which was later compared with Tolstoy's War and Peace, was published by the Macmillan Publishing Company in 1936.

Mitchell's book broke sales records, the New Yorker praised it, and the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom admired "the architectural persistence behind the big work" but criticized the book as overly Southern, particularly in its treatment of Reconstruction. Malcolm Cowley's disdain in his review originated partly from the book's popularity.
In 1937 Gone with the Wind was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

" Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them."
(from Gone with the Wind)

The protagonist of the novel is Scarlett O'Hara, who loves Ashley Wilkes. However, the reader is soon assured that the most important man in her life will be the strong and shrewd Rhett Butler. Ashley marries Melanie Hamilton and Scarlett marries Melanie's brother Charles, but she is soon widowed. Then she marries Frank Kennedy, her sister's fiance, to save Tara, the family plantation, her home. Frank is also killed, and Scarlett finally marries Rhett, who walks out on her with the famous words:
"My dear, I don't give a damn."

Although Gone with the Wind brought Mitchell fame and a tremendous fortune, it seems to have brought little joy. Chased by the press and public, the author and her husband lived modestly and traveled rarely. Also questions about the book's literary status and racism, historical view and depiction of the Ku Klux Klan, which had much similarities with D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915), led to critical neglect which continued well in the 1960s. Griffith's film was based on the Reverend Thomas Dixon's racist play; the author was a great admirer of Mitchell and wanted to write a study of her novel. In Atlanta the Klan kept a high profile and had it national headquarters in the 1920s on the same street, where Mitchell lived.
Mitchell sold the film rights to the producer David O. Selznick for $50,000, and later received another $50,000. The film premiered on December 15, 1939. Mitchell did not take any part in the motion picture adaptation but attended the premiere in Atlanta, overcoming her shyness.
The film won ten Academy Awards, among them best picture.
In England the film and the book were highly popular during World War II - perhaps partly because of the theme of survival and reconstruction. After the war the film conquered the rest of the Europe, giving many women comfort and strength in their everyday problems.
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.

Margaret Mitchell was accidentally struck by a speeding car while crossing Peachtree Street, in downtown Atlanta , on August 11, 1949.
She died five days later at Grady Hospital.
Her memorial service was at Patterson's Funeral Home, and she is buried at Oakland Cemetery with other members of the Mitchell family.

The 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 meets again Rhett Butler.
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 was set on a South Pacific island.