Margaret Mitchell Biography
American Novelist Famous for One Novel, 1937 Pulitzer Prize Winner
Nov 8, 2008
American novelist Margaret Mitchell was the author of one of the most famous novels ever written, Gone with the Wind (1936), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.
Gone with the Wind is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies. An American film adaptation released in 1939 became the highest-grossing movie in Hollywood history, and received a record-breaking number of Academy Awards.
Early Life of Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, the third child of Eugene and Maybelle Mitchell. Her father was president of the local historical society and her mother was president of one of the South's militant suffragette groups. She was also a strict disciplinarian who did not want to spoil her daughter.
In 1918, Margaret graduated from the local Washington Seminary and attended Smith College in Massachusetts to study medicine for a year, but when she learned that her fiancé had been killed in the war in Europe, she took no interest in college life.
Apparently, Mitchell grew up listening to stories about the battles the Confederate Army had fought there during the American Civil War, at the same time the awareness of women's rights were instilled in her at a young age. Later, she used these tales as inspiration for her epic novel.
A Novel Meant to Be
At the age of 22, Mitchell began a career as a journalist, but an ankle injury forced her to retire. By that time she had married and started work on her novel, which took ten years to complete. Her first marriage was a disaster. After it was annulled, she married John Marsh in 1925. He was supportive of her writing interests. When a traveling book editor visited Atlanta in search of new material, she reluctantly let him have a look at her manuscript. Gone with the Wind was published when Mitchell was 36.
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind is a clearly drawn tale of the American Southern life during and after the Civil War told through the lives of two families, their relatives, friends and slaves. It centers on Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. It has been praised as the first novel to tell the story of the Civil War from a Southern woman's point of view.
A romantic epic, Gone with the Wind is full of stirring events and episodes that has created a lasting image of the South through the years. It won Mitchell the 1937 Pulitzer Prize. Worldwide sales are enormous with almost quarter of a million copies sold in paperback in the U.S. alone each year. The book has also been translated into numerous languages.
The 1939 film version starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh is one of the most popular films ever made. Who can ever forget the immortal phrase of Rhett Butler: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!" A more redeeming note is Scarlett O'Hara's positivity: "Tomorrow is another day."
Mitchell never published another book in her lifetime. She died after a tragic automobile accident on August 16, 1949. She was 48.
Published After Her Death
- Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind' Letters, 1976
- A Dynamo going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919-1921
- Lost Laysen, 1996
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994
