10 Fascinating Facts About Gone With the Wind
On this day in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was published. In honor of its birthday, here are 10 things you might not have known about the Pulitzer Prize-winning
10 Fascinating Facts About Gone With the Wind
On this day in 1936, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind was published. In honor of its birthday, here are 10 things you might not have known about the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
1. MARGARET MITCHELL WROTE THE BOOK OUT OF BOREDOM.
It was boredom that caused 25-year-old Margaret Mitchell to write 63 of the most beloved chapters in literary history. Mitchell was a journalist for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine when she took a leave to recover from “a series of injuries,” according to the Margaret Mitchell House, including a recurring ankle injury. When the ankle proved slow to heal this time, she decided to occupy herself by writing.
2. ALMOST NO ONE KNEW SHE WAS WRITING A BOOK.
Though Mitchell spent the next decade working on characters and plot development, almost no one knew she was writing a book. She went to extreme lengths to hide her work from friends and family, including hurriedly throwing a rug over pages scattered on her living room floor once when company showed up unexpectedly.
3. MITCHELL HAD NO INTENTION OF PUBLISHING THE BOOK.
Despite spending 10 years of her life working on the tome, Mitchell didn’t really have much intention of publishing it. When a “friend” heard that she was considering writing a book (though in fact, it had been written), she said something to the effect of, “Imagine, you writing a book!” Annoyed, Mitchell took her massive manuscript to a Macmillan editor the next day. She later regretted the act and sent the editor a telegram saying, “Have changed my mind. Send manuscript back.”
4. SCARLETT WAS ORIGINALLY PANSY.
You know her as Scarlett now, but for years, the heroine of Gone with the Wind was named Pansy. It probably would have stayed that way had the publisher not requested a name change. “We could call her ‘Garbage O’Hara’ for all I care,” Mitchell wrote to her friend and the book’s associate editor. “I just want to finish this damn thing.”
5. TARA WASN'T TARA.
Speaking of name changes, early drafts of Gone With the Wind referred to Tara as “Fountenoy Hall.”
6. DOC HOLLIDAY WAS MITCHELL'S COUSIN.
There was another Southern legend in Margaret Mitchell's family: Old West gunslinger (and dentist) Doc Holliday was Mitchell's cousin by marriage. Many people believe that Mitchell used her famous kin as the inspiration for Ashley Wilkes.
7. MITCHELL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED WITH SCARLETT AND RHETT.
Add Mitchell to the list of people who don’t know what ultimately happened with Scarlett and Rhett. She left the ending ambiguous with no “real” ending even in her own head. “For all I know, Rhett may have found someone else who was less—difficult,” she told Yank magazine in 1945.
8. EVEN IF YOU HAVEN'T READ T