Gone With The Wind
...successful novel, Gone with the Wind, that was published in 1936. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and often used the name Peggy. Her childhood was spent on the laps of Civil War veterans and of her mother's relatives who lived through the war and the years that followed. They told her everything about the war, except that the Confederates had lost it. She was ten years old before making this discovery. After graduating from Washington Seminary, now known as The Westminster Schools, she attended Smith College but withdrew in 1918. She returned to Atlanta to take over the household after her mother's death earlier that year from the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Mitchell used this pivotal scene from her own life to dramatize Scarlett's discovery of her mother's death from typhoid, when Scarlett returns to Tara. Shortly afterward, she joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal, where she wrote a weekly column for the newspaper's Sunday edition. Mitchell is reported to have begun writing Gone with the Wind while bedridden and nursing a broken ankle. Her husband, John Marsh, brought home historical books from the public library to amuse her while she healed. Finally, he told her, "Peggy, if you want another book, why don't you write your own?" She used her encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil War, and used dramatic moments from her own life, to write her epic novel, typing it out on an old Remington typewriter. She originally called her novel "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall." Mitchell wrote for her own amusement, with solid support from her husband, but she kept her literary efforts a secret from all her friends. She wrote in an unorganized fashion, writing the last chapter first, and skipping around from chapter to chapter. Her husband regularly proofread her writings to help keep her motivated. By 1929, when her ankle had healed and most of the book...
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