Gone With the Wind

Gone with the Wind, first published in May 1936, is a romantic novel written by Margaret Mitchell (b. 1900–d. 1949), who won the Pulitzer Prize for the book in 1937.

The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction and depicts the experiences of Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty that she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea. The novel is the source of the 1939 film of the same name.

Margaret Mitchell is the pen name of Peggy Marsh. Her maiden name is Mitchell. She began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926 to pass the time while recovering from an auto-crash injury that refused to heal. In April, 1935, Harold Latham of Macmillan, an editor who was looking for new fiction, read what she had written, and saw that it could be a best-seller.

After Latham agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references, and rewrote the opening chapter several times. Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, a copy editor by trade, edited the final version of the novel. Mitchell wrote the book's final moments first, and then wrote the events that lead up to it. As to what became of her star-crossed lovers, Rhett and Scarlett, after the novel ended, Mitchell did not know, and said, "For all I know, Rhett may have found someone else who was less difficult."

On August 11, 1949, while crossing Peachtree Street in Atlanta with her husband, Margaret Mitchell was struck by a car being driven by a drunk driver. She died five days later at the age of 48. Gone with the Wind is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.