Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
Sep 15th, 2006 by Bauman
“After all, tomorrow is another day”
No one could have predicted, when Atlanta housewife Margaret Mitchell broke her ankle in 1926, that such a trivial mishap would give rise to one of the most enduring of American novels. Confined to her home, Mitchell borrowed piles of books from her local library, until her husband told her that she’d have to write a book herself if she were to have anything more to read.
For the next ten years, Mitchell labored in secret over her sweeping Civil War romance, Gone with the Wind, which would become the fastest-selling novel in the history of American publishing and win the Pulitzer Prize. In October 1936, only a few months after Gone with the Wind was published, Mitchell wrote a letter to one of her novel’s many fans: “How nice of you to write me that you were sorry when you came to the end of Gone with the Wind. When I first saw the book, it looked so long and heavy that my heart sank and I wondered if any reader would ever toil through until the end. Thank you so much for all the wonderful things you wrote me about the book - and about myself.”
We offer a May 1936 first printing of Gone with the Wind, signed by Mitchell, in first-issue dust jacket, accompanied by the wonderful personal letter described above from Mitchell regarding the novel.