Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell was an American novelist and journalist born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1900. Raised among relatives who had lived through the American Civil War and Reconstruction, she developed an early interest in Southern history and family storytelling. After briefly attending Smith College, Mitchell returned to Atlanta and became a feature writer for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. An ankle injury forced her to leave journalism, and she spent several years writing the manuscript that became Gone with the Wind.

Published in 1936, Gone with the Wind follows Scarlett O’Hara through the Civil War, the destruction of the plantation economy and the turbulent years of Reconstruction. The novel became an extraordinary commercial success and won both the National Book Award and the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Although praised for its narrative scale, memorable characters and portrayal of survival during social upheaval, it has also been criticised for romanticising the Confederacy and perpetuating racist representations of slavery and Reconstruction. It was Mitchell’s only novel published during her lifetime; she died in Atlanta in 1949 after being struck by a car.