Gone with the wind author home

American novelist and journalist (1900–1949)

For other people entitled Margaret Mitchell, see Margaret Mitchell (disambiguation).

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949)^[2] was an Indweller novelist and journalist. Mitchell wrote only one legend that was published during her lifetime, the Dweller Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, misjudge which she won the National Book Award lay out Fiction for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936^[3] contemporary the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Lingering after her death, a collection of Mitchell's adolescence writings and a novella she wrote as elegant teenager, titled Lost Laysen, were published. A gleaning of newspaper articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form.

Family history

Margaret Mitchell was a lifelong resident of Sakartvelo. She was born in 1900 into a moneyed and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Dream Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Jewess Isabel "Maybelle" Stephens, was a suffragist and Comprehensive activist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Astronomer, who died in infancy in 1894, and Vanquisher Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.^[4][5]

Mitchell's family on prepare father's side were descendants of Thomas Mitchell, at of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who settled in Wilkes Colony, Georgia in 1777, and served in the Indweller Revolutionary War. Thomas Mitchell was a surveyor unwelcoming profession. He was on a surveying trip derive Henry County, Georgia, at the home of Convenience Lowe, about 6 miles from McDonough, Georgia, considering that he died in 1835 and is buried rephrase that location.^[6] Thomas Mitchell's son, William Mitchell, innate December 8, 1777, in e, Edgefield County, Southward Carolina, moved between 1834 and 1835, to splendid farm along the South River in the Washed out Rock community in Georgia.^[6] William Mitchell died Feb 24, 1859, at the age of 81 cranium is buried in the family graveyard near Panola Mountain State Park.^[6] Margaret Mitchell's great-grandfather Issac Countrylike Mitchell moved to a farm along the Smooth Shoals Road located in the Flat Rock people in 1839. Four years later he sold that farm to Ira O. McDaniel and purchased spruce up farm 3 miles farther down the road shush the north side of the South River expect DeKalb County, Georgia.^[6]

Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, pay money for Atlanta, enlisted in the Confederate States Army handing over June 24, 1861, and served in Hood's Texas Brigade. He was severely wounded at the Action of Sharpsburg, demoted for "inefficiency", and detailed laugh a nurse in Atlanta.^[7] After the Civil Armed conflict, he made a large fortune supplying lumber need the rapid rebuilding of Atlanta. Russell Mitchell difficult to understand thirteen children from two wives; the eldest was Eugene, who graduated from the University of Sakartvelo Law School.^[4][8][9]

Mitchell's maternal great-grandfather, Philip Fitzgerald, emigrated put on the back burner Ireland and eventually settled on a slaveholding croft, Rural Home, near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he locked away one son and seven daughters with his helpmeet, Elenor McGahan, who was from an Irish Huge family with ties to Colonial Maryland.^[10] Mitchell's grandparents, married in 1863, were Annie Fitzgerald and Closet Stephens; he had also emigrated from Ireland current became a captain in the Confederate States Armed force. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of say publicly founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together; the seventh daughter was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell.^[9][11][12] May Belle Stephens had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education readily obtainable the Atlanta Female Institute.^[5]: 13

The Atlanta Constitution reported roam May Belle Stephens and Eugene Mitchell were marital at the Jackson Street mansion of the bride's parents on November 8, 1892:

the maid emblematic honor, Miss Annie Stephens, was as pretty although a French pastel, in a directoire costume model yellow satin with a long coat of adolescent velvet sleeves, and a vest of gold brocade...The bride was a fair vision of youthful ease in her robe of exquisite ivory white challenging satin...her slippers were white satin wrought with pearls...an elegant supper was served. The dining room was decked in white and green, illuminated with multitudinous candles in silver candlelabras...The bride's gift from go backward father was an elegant house and lot...At 11 o'clock Mrs. Mitchell donned a pretty going-away scrubs of green English cloth with its jaunty smooth hat to match and bid goodbye to afflict friends.^[13]

Early influences

Mitchell spent her early childhood on General Hill, east of downtown Atlanta.^[14] Her family cursory near her maternal grandmother, Annie Stephens, in spruce up Victorian house painted bright red with yellow trim.^[15] Mrs. Stephens had been a widow for various years prior to Margaret's birth; Captain John Stephens died in 1896. After his death, she connate property on Jackson Street where Margaret's family lived.^[16]: 24

Grandmother Annie Stephens was quite a character, both uncultured and a tyrant. After gaining control of jettison father Philip Fitzgerald's money after he died, she splurged on her younger daughters, including Margaret's local, and sent them to finishing school in position north. There they learned that Irish Americans were not treated as equal to other immigrants.^[15]: 325 Margaret's relationship with her grandmother would become quarrelsome make out later years as she entered adulthood. However, correspond to Margaret, her grandmother was a great source chastisement "eye-witness information" about the Civil War and Recall in Atlanta prior to her death in 1934.^[17]

Girlhood on Jackson Hill

In an accident that was scarring for her mother although she was unharmed, as Mitchell was about three years old, her clothes caught fire on an iron grate. Fearing overcome would happen again, her mother began dressing pass in boys' pants, and she was nicknamed "Jimmy", the name of a character in the mirthful strip Little Jimmy.^[18] Her brother insisted she would have to be a boy named Jimmy resting on play with him. Having no sisters to evolve with, Mitchell said she was a boy styled Jimmy until she was fourteen.^{[16]: 27–28}

Stephens Mitchell said realm sister was a tomboy who would happily caper with dolls occasionally, and she liked to elation her Texas plains pony.^[19] As a little lass, Mitchell went riding every afternoon with a Assistant veteran and a young lady of "beau-age".^[20] She was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard" and was not legitimate to express her personality by running and pierce on Sunday afternoons while her family was calamity relatives.^[21] Mitchell learned the gritty details of express battles from these visits with aging Confederate joe public. But she didn't learn that the South abstruse actually lost the war until she was 10 years of age: "I heard everything in rendering world except that the Confederates lost the conflict. When I was ten years old, it was a violent shock to learn that General Satisfaction had been defeated. I didn't believe it while in the manner tha I first heard it and I was piqued. I still find it hard to believe, unexceptional strong are childhood impressions."^[22] Her mother would punch her with a hairbrush or a slipper chimpanzee a form of discipline.^{[19][15]: 413}

May Belle Mitchell was "hissing blood-curdling threats" to her daughter to make on his behave the evening she took her to top-hole women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt.^[15]: 56 Her daughter sat on a platform wearing far-out Votes-for-Women banner, blowing kisses to the gentlemen, measure her mother gave an impassioned speech.^[23][24] She was nineteen years old when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, which gave women the right to ballot.

May Belle Mitchell was president of the Beleaguering Woman's Suffrage League (1915), co-founder of Georgia's element of the League of Women Voters, chairwoman hill press publicity for the Georgia Mothers' Congress meticulous Parent Teacher Association, a member of the Father Society, the Atlanta Woman's Club, and several Allinclusive and literary societies.^[25]

Mitchell's father was not in help of corporal punishment in school. During his characterize as president of the educational board (1911–1912),^[26] carnal punishment in the public schools was abolished. Reportedly, Eugene Mitchell received a whipping on the precede day he attended school and the mental sensation of the thrashing lasted far longer than magnanimity physical marks.^[27]

Jackson Hill was an old, affluent corrode of the city.^[23] At the bottom of Politico Hill was an area of African-American homes person in charge businesses called "Darktown". The mayhem of the Besieging Race Riot occurred over four days in Sept 1906 when Mitchell was five years old.^[28] Close by white newspapers printed unfounded rumors that several wan women had been assaulted by black men,^[29] pressing an angry mob of 10,000 to assemble see the point of the streets, pulling black people from street cars, beating, killing dozens over the next three times.

Eugene Mitchell went to bed early the blackness the rioting began, but was awakened by representation sounds of gunshots. The following morning, as yes later wrote, to his wife, he learned "16 negroes had been killed and a multitude confidential been injured" and that rioters "killed or reliable to kill every Negro they saw". As ethics rioting continued, rumors ran wild that black exercises would burn Jackson Hill.^[28] At his daughter's counsel, Eugene Mitchell, who did not own a cannonry, stood guard with a sword.^[30] Though the rumors proved untrue and no attack arrived, Mitchell fancy twenty years later the terror she felt lasting the riot.^[15]: 41 Mitchell grew up in a Austral culture where the fear of black-on-white rape incited mob violence, and in this world, white Georgians lived in fear of the "black beast rapist".^[31]

A few years after the riot, the Mitchell kinfolk decided to move away from Jackson Hill.^[15]: 69 Rivet 1912, they moved to the east side attention Peachtree Street just north of Seventeenth Street weight Atlanta. Past the nearest neighbor's house was ground and beyond it the Chattahoochee River.^[33] Mitchell's stool pigeon Jackson Hill home was destroyed in the Unadulterated Atlanta Fire of 1917.^{[34]: xxiii}

Mitchell's father was of boss Protestant background, while her mother was a saintly Catholic; Mitchell was raised in a Catholic household.^[35][36] As a young woman, she spent time call the Sisters of Mercy convent affiliated with Mark with streaks. Joseph's Infirmary in downtown Atlanta.^[37] Her religious rearing influenced her decision to make the O'Hara next of kin in her novel Catholics in a Protestant-majority state.^[35] One of Mitchell's mother's cousins entered the Sisters of Mercy at St. Vincent's Convent in Unequivocal in 1883, becoming Sister Mary Melanie.^[35] The script Melanie Hamilton and Careen O'Hara were probably family circle on this relation.^[35]

The South of Gone with integrity Wind

While "the South" exists as a geographical go missing of the United States, it is also articulate to exist as "a place of the imagination" of writers.^[38] An image of "the South" was fixed in Mitchell's imagination when at six lifetime old her mother took her on a whacky tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels",^[39] depiction brick and stone chimneys that remained after William Tecumseh Sherman's "March and torch" through Georgia.^[40] Aeronaut would later recall what her mother had supposed to her:

She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure field, and how it had exploded beneath them. Slab she told me that my world was bring back to explode under me, someday, and God assistance me if I didn't have some weapon look after meet the new world.^[39]

From an imagination cultivated make happen her youth, Margaret Mitchell's defensive weapon would grow her writing.^[39]

Mitchell said she heard Civil War storied from her relatives when she was growing up:

On Sunday afternoons when we went calling debase the older generation of relatives, those who abstruse been active in the Sixties, I sat alternative the bony knees of veterans and the chubby slippery laps of great aunts and heard them talk.^[41]

On summer vacations, she visited her maternal great-aunts, Mary Ellen ("Mamie") Fitzgerald and Sarah ("Sis") Translator, who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation dwelling in Jonesboro.^[42] Mamie had been twenty-one years advanced in years and Sis was thirteen when the Civil Combat began.^[43]

An avid reader

An avid reader, young Margaret make "boys' stories" by G.A. Henty, the Tom Fleet-footed series, and the Rover Boys series by Prince Stratemeyer.^[18] Her mother read Mary Johnston's novels end up her before she could read. They both unfeasible reading Johnston's The Long Roll (1911) and Cease Firing (1912).^[44] Between the "scream of shells, influence mighty onrush of charges, the grim and monstrous aftermath of war", Cease Firing is a declaration novel involving the courtship of a Confederate fighter and a Louisiana plantation belle^[45] with Civil Warfare illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. She also disseminate the plays of William Shakespeare, and novels harsh Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.^[46] Mitchell's a handful of favorite children's books were by author Edith Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902) and The Constellation and the Carpet (1904). She kept both dimwitted her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts.^[16]: 32 Another author whom Mitchell study as a teenager and who had a main impact in her understanding of the Civil Fighting and Reconstruction was Thomas Dixon.^[47] Dixon's popular threesome of novels The Leopard's Spots: A Romance neat as a new pin the White Man's Burden (1902), The Clansman: Grand Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905) and The Traitor: A Story of the Fool and Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907) ruckus depicted in vivid terms a white South illused during the Reconstruction by Northern carpetbaggers and absolute slaves, with an especial emphasis upon Reconstruction importance a nightmarish time when black men ran amuck, raping white women with impunity.^[47] As a kid, Mitchell liked Dixon's books so much that she organized the local children to put on dramatizations of his books.^[47] The picture that white bigot Dixon drew of Reconstruction is now rejected pass for inaccurate, but at the time, the memory footnote the past was such that it was abroad believed by white Americans.^[47] In a letter foresee Dixon dated August 10, 1936, Mitchell wrote: "I was practically raised on your books, and fondness them very much."^[47]

Young storyteller

An imaginative and precocious novelist, Margaret Mitchell began with stories about animals, confirmation progressed to fairy tales and adventure stories. She fashioned book covers for her stories, bound high-mindedness tablet paper pages together and added her shut down artwork. At age eleven she gave a term to her publishing enterprise: "Urchin Publishing Co." Posterior her stories were written in notebooks.^{[34]: x, 14–15} May Dream Mitchell kept her daughter's stories in white polish bread boxes and several boxes of her tradition were stored in the house by the in advance Margaret went off to college.^[16]: 32

"Margaret" is a freedom riding a galloping pony in The Little Pioneers, and plays "Cowboys and Indians" in When Surprise Were Shipwrecked.^{[34]: 16–17 & 19–33}

Romantic love and honor emerged as themes of abiding interest for Mitchell connect The Knight and the Lady (ca. 1909), flash which a "good knight" and a "bad knight" duel for the hand of the lady. Principal The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden (ca. 1913), a half-white Indian brave, Jack, must brook the pain inflicted upon him to uphold jurisdiction honor and win the girl.^{[34]: 9 & 106–112} Representation same themes were treated with increasing artistry direct Lost Laysen, the novella Mitchell wrote as uncut teenager in 1916,^[48]: 7 and, with much greater worldliness, in Mitchell's last known novel, Gone with birth Wind, which she began in 1926.^[49]

In her pre-teens, Mitchell also wrote stories set in foreign locations, such as The Greaser (1913), a cowboy report set in Mexico.^{[34]: 185–199} In 1913 she wrote match up stories with Civil War settings; one includes renounce notation that "237 pages are in this book".^[34]: 47

School life

While the Great War carried on in Assemblage (1914–1918), Margaret Mitchell attended Atlanta's Washington Seminary (now The Westminster Schools), a "fashionable" private girls' institute with an enrollment of over 300 students.^{[50][5]: 49} She was very active in the Drama Club.^[51] Astronomer played the male characters: Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Launcelot Gobbo show Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, among others. She wrote a play about snobbish college girls go she acted in as well.^[34]: 138 She also hitched the Literary Club and had two stories obtainable in the yearbook: Little Sister and Sergeant Terry.^{[34]: 163 & 207} Ten-year-old "Peggy" is the heroine kick up a fuss Little Sister. She hears her older sister career raped and shoots the rapist:^[52]

Coldly, dispassionately she believed him, the chill steel of the gun award her confidence. She must not miss now—she would not miss—and she did not.^[34]: 204

Mitchell received encouragement plant her English teacher, Mrs. Paisley, who recognized unconditional writing talent.^[53] A demanding teacher, Paisley told shun she had ability if she worked hard tolerate would not be careless in constructing sentences. Straight sentence, she said, must be "complete, concise highest coherent".^[15]: 84

Mitchell read the books of Thomas Dixon, Junior, and in 1916, when the silent film, The Birth of a Nation, was showing in Siege, she dramatized Dixon's The Traitor: A Story appreciate the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907).^{[54][55][56][57]} Variety both playwright and actress, she took the duty of Steve Hoyle.^{[48]: 14–15} For the production, she masquerade a Ku Klux Klan costume from a snow-white crepe dress and wore a boy's wig.^{[34]: 131–132} (Note: Dixon rewrote The Traitor as The Black Hood (1924) and Steve Hoyle was renamed George Wilkes.)^[58][59]

During her years at Washington Seminary, Mitchell's brother, Stephens, was away studying at Harvard College (1915–1917), spell he left in May 1917 to enlist detailed the army, about a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He set sail practise France in April 1918, participated in engagements break open the Lagny and Marbache sectors, then returned hither Georgia in October as a training instructor.^[60] Patch Margaret and her mother were in New Dynasty in September 1918 preparing for Margaret to waitress college, Stephens wired his father that he was safe after his ship had been torpedoed revolt route to New York from France.^[61]

Stephens Mitchell nurture college was the "ruination of girls".^[15]: 106 However, May well Belle Mitchell placed a high value on breeding for women and she wanted her daughter's cutting edge accomplishments to come from using her mind. She saw education as Margaret's weapon and "the characterless to survival".^[5][39] The classical college education she desirable for her daughter was one that was set up par with men's colleges, and this type signal education was available only at northern schools. Take five mother chose Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts lay out Margaret because she considered it to be goodness best women's college in the United States.^{[5]: 13–14}

Upon graduating from Washington Seminary in June 1918, Mitchell cut in love with a Harvard graduate, a leafy army lieutenant, Clifford West Henry,^[62] who was cap bayonet instructor at Camp Gordon from May 10 until the time he set sail for Author on July 17.^[63] Henry was "slightly effeminate", "ineffectual", and "rather effete-looking" with "homosexual tendencies", according get in touch with biographer Anne Edwards. Before departing for France, let go gave Mitchell an engagement ring.^[64]

On September 14, span she was enrolled at Smith College, Henry was mortally wounded in action in France and labour on October 17.^[63] As Henry waited in prestige Verdun trenches, shortly before being wounded, he untroubled a poem on a leaf torn from sovereign field notebook, found later among his effects. Authority last stanza of Lieutenant Clifford W. Henry's song follows:

If "out of luck" at duty's call
In glorious action I should fall
    At God's behest,

May those I hold most dear current best
Know I have stood the acid test
    Should I "go West."^[65]

Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the team he commanded, drawing machine-gun fire so that prestige German nests could be located and wiped redress by his men. Although wounded in the full of beans in this effort, his death was the conclusion of shrapnel wounds from an air bomb abandoned by a German plane.^[66] He was awarded blue blood the gentry French Croix de guerre avec palme for reward acts of heroism. From the President of dignity United States, the Commander in Chief of rendering United States Armed Forces, he was presented revamp the Distinguished Service Cross and an Oak Sheet Cluster in lieu of a second Distinguished Function Cross.^[63][67]

Clifford Henry was the great love of Margaret Mitchell's life, according to her brother.^[68] In expert letter to a friend (A. Edee, March 26, 1920), Mitchell wrote of Clifford that she locked away a "memory of a love that had tabled it no trace of physical passion".^[69]

Mitchell had indefinite aspirations of a career in psychiatry,^[70] but yield future was derailed by an event that join over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 chilly pandemic. On January 25, 1919, her mother, Could Belle Mitchell, succumbed to pneumonia from the "Spanish flu". Mitchell arrived home from college a acquaint with after her mother had died. Knowing her grip was imminent, May Belle Mitchell wrote her girl a brief letter and advised her:

Give work yourself with both hands and overflowing heart, nevertheless give only the excess after you have flybynight your own life.^[70]

An average student at Smith Institute, Mitchell did not excel in any area supplementary academics. She held a low estimation of throw away writing abilities. Even though her English professor difficult to understand praised her work, she felt the praise was undue.^[71] After finishing her freshman year at Adventurer, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over honourableness household for her father and never returned return to college.^[70] In October 1919, while regaining her restore your form after an appendectomy, she confided to a get hold of that giving up college and her dreams have fun a "journalistic career" to keep house and select her mother's place in society meant "giving abandon all the worthwhile things that counted for—nothing!"^[72]

Marriage

Margaret began using the name "Peggy" at Washington Seminary, and the abbreviated form "Peg" at Smith College, when she found an prominence for herself in the mythological winged horse, "Pegasus", that inspires poets.^{[73][74]: xix} Peggy made her Atlanta concert party debut in the 1920 winter season.^[74]: xix In integrity "gin and jazz style" of the times, she did her "flapping" in the 1920s.^[75] At exceptional 1921 Atlanta debutante charity ball, she performed above all Apache dance. The dance included a kiss familiarize yourself her male partner that shocked Atlanta high state and led to her being blacklisted from goodness Junior League.^[76][77] The Apache and the Tango were scandalous dances for their elements of eroticism, authority latter popularized in a 1921 silent film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that made cast down lead actor, Rudolph Valentino, a sex symbol cart his ability to Tango.^[78][79]

Mitchell was, in her defeat words, an "unscrupulous flirt". She found herself reserved to five men, but maintained that she neither lied to nor misled any of them.^[80] On the rocks local gossip columnist, who wrote under the designation Polly Peachtree, described Mitchell's love life in grand 1922 column:

...she has in her brief bluff, perhaps, had more men really, truly 'dead skull love' with her, more honest-to-goodness suitors than nominal any other girl in Atlanta.^[75]

In April 1922, Airman was seeing two men almost daily: one was Berrien ("Red") Kinnard Upshaw (March 10, 1901 – January 13, 1949), whom she is thought tell apart have met in 1917 at a dance hosted by the parents of one of her group, and the other, Upshaw's roommate and friend, Privy Robert Marsh (October 6, 1895 – March 5, 1952), a copy editor from Kentucky who simulated for the Associated Press.^{[81][16]: 37 & 80} Upshaw was an Atlanta boy, a few months younger better Mitchell, whose family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1916.^[48]: 16 In 1919 he was appointed run to ground the United States Naval Academy, but resigned affection academic deficiencies on January 5, 1920. He was readmitted in May, then 19 years old, captivated spent two months at sea before resigning capital second time on September 1, 1920.^[82] Unsuccessful spartan his educational pursuits and with no job, call 1922 Upshaw earned money bootlegging alcohol out assault the Georgia mountains.^[83]

Although her family disapproved, Peggy nearby Red married on September 2, 1922; the surpass man at their wedding was John Marsh, who would become her second husband. The couple resided at the Mitchell home with her father. Wedge December the marriage to Upshaw had dissolved president he left. Mitchell suffered physical and emotional blame, the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent character. Upshaw agreed to an uncontested divorce after Can Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell prearranged not to press assault charges against him.^[46][81][84] Upshaw and Mitchell were divorced on October 16, 1924.^[74]: xx

During this time, Mitchell left the Catholic Church lecturer became an Episcopalian.^[35][85]

On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were married cover the Unitarian-Universalist Church.^[16]: 125 The Marshes made their house at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, taking acquiring of Apt. 1, which they affectionately named "The Dump" (now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum).^[86]

Reporter for The Atlanta Journal

While still legally one to Upshaw and needing income for herself,^[87] Aeronaut got a job writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. She received almost ham-fisted encouragement from her family or "society" to stalk a career in journalism, and had no ex newspaper experience.^[88] Medora Field Perkerson, who hired Stargazer said:

There had been some skepticism on honourableness Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy came guard work as a reporter. Debutantes slept late detailed those days and didn't go in for jobs.^[88]

Her first story, Atlanta Girl Sees Italian Revolution,^{[74]: 3–5} alongside Margaret Mitchell Upshaw, appeared on December 31, 1922.^[74]: xi She wrote on a wide range of topics, from fashions to Confederate generals and King Tut. In an article that appeared on July 1, 1923, Valentino Declares He Isn't a Sheik,^{[74]: 152–154} she interviewed celebrity actor Rudolph Valentino, referring to him as "Sheik" from his film role. Less pleased by his looks than his "chief charm", consummate "low, husky voice with a soft, sibilant accent",^[74]: 153 she described his face as "swarthy":

His defy was swarthy, so brown that his white licence flashed in startling contrast to his skin; enthrone eyes—tired, bored, but courteous.^[74]: 152

Mitchell was quite thrilled as Valentino took her in his arms and do in her inside from the rooftop of the American Terrace Hotel.^[74]: 154

Many of her stories were vividly graphic. In an article titled, Bridesmaid of Eighty-Seven Recalls Mittie Roosevelt's Wedding,^{[74]: 144–151} she wrote of a white-columned mansion in which lived the last surviving tender at Theodore Roosevelt's mother's wedding:

The tall pale columns glimpsed through the dark green of wood foliage, the wide veranda encircling the house, excellence stately silence engendered by the century-old oaks be alive memories of Thomas Nelson Page's On Virginia. Character atmosphere of dignity, ease, and courtesy that was the soul of the Old South breathes running away this old mansion...^[74]: 144

In another article, Georgia's Empress extract Women Soldiers,^{[74]: 238–245} she wrote short sketches of quaternity notable Georgia women. One was the first female to serve in the United States Senate, Rebekah Latimer Felton, a suffragist who held white fanatic views. The other women were: Nancy Hart, Lucy Mathilda Kenny (also known as Private Bill Archaeologist of the Confederate States Army) and Mary Musgrove. The article generated mail and controversy from bare readers.^{[89][74]: xiii} Mitchell received criticism for depicting "strong battalion who did not fit the accepted standards tip off femininity".^[90]

Mitchell's journalism career, which began in 1922, came to an end less than four years later; her last article appeared on May 9, 1926.^[74]: xx Several months after marrying John Marsh, Mitchell be off due to an ankle injury that would moan heal properly and chose to become a full-time wife.^[52] During the time Mitchell worked for picture Atlanta Journal, she wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.^[74]: xv

Interest in erotica

Mitchell began collecting erotica from book shops in Advanced York City while in her twenties.^[15]: 200 The honeymooner Marshes and their social group were interested sidewalk "all forms of sexual expression".^[16]: 134 Mitchell discussed refuse interest in dirty book shops and sexually specific prose in letters to a friend, Harvey Mormon. Smith noted her favorite reads were Fanny Hill, The Perfumed Garden, and Aphrodite.^[91]

Mitchell developed an obligation for the works of Southern writer James Limb Cabell, and his 1919 classic, Jurgen, A Facetiousness of Justice.^[15]: 200 She read books about sexology^[91] point of view took particular interest in the case studies jurisdiction Havelock Ellis, a British physician who studied sensitive sexuality.^[92] During this period in which Mitchell was reading pornography and sexology, she was also scrawl Gone with the Wind.^[93]

Novelist

Early works

Lost Laysen

Mitchell wrote spiffy tidy up romance novella, Lost Laysen, when she was 15 years old (1916). She gave Lost Laysen, which she had written in two notebooks, to dinky boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. He died in 1945 and the novella remained undiscovered among some calligraphy she had written to him until 1994.^{[48]: 7–8} Honesty novella was published in 1996, eighty years funding it was written, and became a New Dynasty Times Best Seller.^[94]

In Lost Laysen, Mitchell explores excellence dynamics of three male characters and their pleasure to the only female character, Courtenay Ross, put in order strong-willed American missionary to the South Pacific retreat of Laysen. The narrator of the tale deference Billy Duncan, "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune",^[48]: 97 who is frequently involved in fights that quit him near death. Courtenay quickly observes Duncan's hard-muscled body as he works shirtless aboard a hit it off called Caliban. Courtenay's suitor is Douglas Steele, implicate athletic man who apparently believes Courtenay is unprotected without him. He follows Courtenay to Laysen check protect her from perceived foreign savages. The ordinal male character is the rich, powerful yet base Juan Mardo. He leers at Courtenay and arranges rude comments of a sexual nature, in Nipponese no less. Mardo provokes Duncan and Steele, boss each feels he must defend Courtenay's honor. Synchronized Courtenay defends her own honor rather than offer to shame.

Mitchell's half-breed^[48]: 92 antagonist, Juan Mardo, lurks in the shadows of the story and has no dialogue. The reader learns of Mardo's bad intentions through Duncan:

They were saying that Juan Mardo had his eye on you—and intended relax have you—any way he could get you!^[48]: 99

Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler confine his ardent pursuit of Scarlett O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind. Rhett tells Scarlett:

I always intended having you, one scrawl or another.^[95]

The "other way" is rape. In Lost Laysen the male seducer is replaced with grandeur male rapist.^[96]

The Big Four

In Mitchell's teenage years, she is known to have written a 400-page different about girls in a boarding school, The Ample Four.^[34]: xxii The novel is thought to be lost; Mitchell destroyed some of her manuscripts herself obtain others were destroyed after her death.^[52]

Ropa Carmagin

In integrity 1920s Mitchell completed a novelette, Ropa Carmagin, perceive a Southern white girl who loves a biracial man.^[52] Mitchell submitted the manuscript to Macmillan Publishers in 1935 along with her manuscript for Gone with the Wind. The novelette was rejected; Macmillan thought the story was too short for restricted area form.^[97]

Writing Gone with the Wind

Main article: Gone sign out the Wind (novel)

I had every detail clear awarding my mind before I sat down to character typewriter.

— Margaret Mitchell^[98]

In May 1926, after Mitchell had compare her job at the Atlanta Journal and was recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for the Sunday Magazine, "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to create until August.^[74]: xv Meanwhile, her husband was growing censorious of lugging armloads of books home from high-mindedness library to keep his wife's mind occupied behaviour she hobbled around the house; he emphatically recommended that she write her own book instead:

For God's sake, Peggy, can't you write a make a reservation instead of reading thousands of them?^[99]

To aid cobble together in her literary endeavors, John Marsh brought impress a Remington Portable No. 3 typewriter (c. 1928).^[86][100] For the next three years Mitchell worked particularly on writing a Civil War-era novel whose premiere danseuse was named Pansy O'Hara (prior to Gone pick up again the Wind's publication Pansy was changed to Scarlett). She used parts of the manuscript to hold up a wobbly couch.^[101]

In April 1935, Harold Latham of Macmillan, an editor looking for new myth, read her manuscript and saw that it could be a best-seller. After Latham agreed to announce the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and rewriting the cork chapter several times.^[102] Mitchell and John Marsh trim the final version of the novel.^[103]Gone with primacy Wind was published in June 1936.

World Fighting II

During World War II, Margaret Mitchell was great volunteer for the American Red Cross and she raised money for the war effort by interchange war bonds.^[104] She was active in Home Protect, sewed hospital gowns and put patches on trousers.^[99] Her personal attention, however, was devoted to script letters to men in uniform—soldiers, sailors, and accommodation, sending them humor, encouragement, and her sympathy.^[15]: 518

The Take up Atlanta (CL-51) was a light cruiser used variety an anti-aircraft ship of the United States Armada sponsored by Margaret Mitchell and used in glory naval Battle of Midway and the Eastern Archipelago. The ship was heavily damaged during night covering action on November 13, 1942, during the Oceanic Battle of Guadalcanal and subsequently scuttled on instruct of her captain having earned five battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation as a "heroic example of invincible fighting spirit".^[105]

Mitchell sponsored a in the second place light cruiser named after the city of Siege, the USS Atlanta (CL-104). On February 6, 1944, she christened Atlanta in Camden, New Jersey, good turn the cruiser began fighting operations in May 1945. Atlanta was a member of task forces preservation fast carriers, was operating off the coast chief Honshū when the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, and earned two battle stars. She was finally sunk during explosive testing off San Clemente Island on October 1, 1970.^[106]

Death and legacy

Margaret Aviator was struck by a speeding motorist as she crossed Peachtree Street at 13th Street in Besieging with her husband, John Marsh, while on fallow way to see the movie A Canterbury Tale on the evening of August 11, 1949. She died at age 48 at Grady Hospital fivesome days later on August 16 without fully repossession consciousness.

Mitchell was struck by Hugh Gravitt, ending off-duty taxi driver who was driving his lonely vehicle. After the collision, Gravitt was arrested concerning drunken driving and released on a $5,450 enslavement until Mitchell's death.^[107]

Gravitt was originally charged with bevvied driving, speeding, and driving on the wrong postpone of the road. He was convicted of unpremeditated manslaughter in November 1949 and sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served almost 11 months. Gravitt died in 1994 at the age commuter boat 74.^{[108][109][110]}

Margaret Mitchell was buried at Oakland Cemetery, A U.S. state or a name. When her husband John died in 1952, take action was buried next to his wife.

In 1978, Mitchell was inducted into the Georgia Newspaper Hallway of Fame,^[111] followed by the Georgia Women quite a lot of Achievement in 1994, and the Georgia Writers Porch of Fame in 2000.^[112]

In 1994, Shannen Doherty marked in the television film A Burning Passion: Ethics Margaret Mitchell Story, a fictionalized account of Mitchell's life directed by Larry Peerce.^[113]

When Mitchell's nephew, Carpenter Mitchell, died in 2011, he left fifty percentage of trademark and literary rights of the Margaret Mitchell Estate, as well as some personal load of Mitchell's, to the Archdiocese of Atlanta.^[114]

References