Today in History
November 08, 1900
A One-Hit Wonder
Margaret Mitchell is born to Eugene and May Belle Mitchell in Atlanta Georgia. In 1922, she joins the staff of the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine but, in 1926, she suffers an ankle injury that forces her to leave her job so she can recuperate. It is during this time that she pens the novel that will make her famous. Gone With the Wind, a 1,037-page tome set in the Civil War and Reconstruction-era South that details the life of fiery belle Scarlett O'Hara, hits bookshelves in June 1936 and is a publishing sensation, selling a million copies by October that year. The book receives a Pulitzer Prize the following year and in 1939 an Academy Award-winning movie adaptation starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh graces movie theater screens to much critical and popular acclaim. Mitchell dies in 1949 after being hit by a car while attempting to cross Peachtree St. (ironically, where a portion of Gone With the Wind takes place). Gone With the Wind is the only novel published during Mitchell's lifetime; however a manuscript for novella Mitchell wrote in 1916, Lost Laysen, is later discovered and published in 1996.
November 2009
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