Mitchell, Margaret

Mitchell, Margaret, 1900–1949, American novelist, b. Atlanta, Ga. Her one novel, Gone with the Wind (1936; Pulitzer Prize), a romantic, panoramic portrait of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods in Georgia, is one of the most popular novels in the history of American publishing. The film adaptation (1939) has also been extraordinarily successful.

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Mitchell, Margaret

(born Nov. 8, 1900, Atlanta, Ga., U.S.—died Aug. 16, 1949, Atlanta) U.S. writer. Mitchell attended Smith College and then wrote for The Atlanta Journal before spending 10 years writing her one book, Gone with the Wind (1936, Pulitzer Prize; film, 1939). A story of the American Civil War and Reconstruction from the white Southern point of view, it was almost certainly the largest-selling novel in the history of U.S. publishing to that time. A parody of the book, as told from a slave's point of view, The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall, was published in 2001.

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Mitchell, Margaret (Munnerlyn) (Peggy Mitchell, Margaret Mitchell Upshaw, Elizabeth Bennett, pen names) (1900–49) writer; born in Atlanta, Ga. She studied at Smith (1918–19), married Berrien Upshaw (1922; annulled 1924), and became a journalist for the Atlanta Journal (1922–26). She married John Marsh in 1925 and in 1926 began working on fiction. After several false starts, she wrote what was to become one of the all-time best-selling American novels, Gone With the Wind (1936). It won the Pulitzer Prize (1937) and was made into an immensely popular film (1939). She never wrote another novel and died prematurely after being struck by an automobile.

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Mitchell, Margaret 

Born Nov. 8, 1900, in Atlanta, Ga.; died there Aug. 16, 1949. American writer.

Born into a wealthy Southern family, Mitchell became a journalist in 1922. Her only novel, Gone With the Wind (1936), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937; the book went through more than 70 editions and was translated into many languages. A film by the same name, directed by V. Fleming, was released in 1939.

In her novel, Mitchell vividly portrayed life in the American South during the Civil War and the Reconstruction. Although she depicted the degradation of the decadent, idle slaveholders, Mitchell idealized plantation life at a time when it was being shattered by capitalist ways.

REFERENCES

[N. V.] “Unesennye vetrom Margaret Mitchell.” Literaturnoe obozrenie, 1937, no. 8.
Thomas, B. The Story of “Gone With the Wind.” New York, 1967.