Gone with the Wind

Georgia, 1861. Scarlett O’Hara, the determined daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, is preoccupied with Ashley Wilkes until war overturns the social world that has protected her. The Confederate defeat, Atlanta’s evacuation and the destruction of the plantation economy force Scarlett to rely on calculation, physical endurance and a succession of marriages to save Tara. Her long conflict with Rhett Butler becomes inseparable from her pursuit of security and status.

The novel follows Scarlett from the Civil War through Reconstruction and won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. Its scale, memorable protagonist and treatment of survival made it one of the most influential American historical novels, but its portrayal of slavery, Black characters and Reconstruction romanticises the slaveholding South and reproduces Lost Cause mythology. It is therefore both a major work of popular fiction and a revealing document of white Southern historical memory in the 1930s.