Margaret Mitchell novels. Margaret Mitchell: biography, quotes, photos, works
The author of the great novel Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, did not live a very long and very difficult life. The only literary work she created brought the writer world fame and wealth, but took away too much spiritual strength.
The film based on the novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell “Gone with the Wind” was released in 1939 - just three years after the publication of the book. The premiere was attended by Hollywood stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, who played the roles of the main characters - Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. At a distance from the cinematic beauties stood a modest, thin woman in a hat. The frantic crowd hardly noticed her. But it was Margaret Mitchell herself - author of a book that became a classic during the writer’s lifetime American literature. She basked in the glory of her work from 1936 to 1949 - until the very day of her death.
Sportswoman and coquette
Margaret Mitchell was almost contemporary with the 20th century. She was born in the same Atlanta (Georgia), which became the setting for her immortal novel. The girl was born into a prosperous and wealthy family. Her father was a lawyer. The mother, although officially listed as a housewife, joined the suffragette movement - women who fought for their voting rights. In general, the author largely copied the green-eyed Scarlett O'Hara from herself. Mitchell was half-Irish and a Southerner to the core. But one should not think that the writer was some kind of old maid in a pince-nez and with a pen in her hand. Not at all.The novel "Gone with the Wind" begins with the phrase: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful." But Margaret Mitchell was beautiful. Although, apparently, she did not consider herself particularly attractive, since she began the novel with such a phrase. But she was clearly being modest. Her dark hair, almond-shaped green eyes and slender figure attracted men like a magnet. But contemporaries remembered Margaret not as a flighty beauty, but, first of all, as a wonderful storyteller and an amazing listener of other people's memories. Both of Mitchell's grandfathers served in the Civil War between the North and the South, and the future writer would spend hours listening to stories about their exploits during that time.
This is how one of her friends later recalled Mitchell: “It is difficult to describe Peggy (Margaret’s childhood nickname - author’s note) with a pen, to convey her cheerfulness, her interest in people and a thorough knowledge of their nature, the breadth of her interests and range of reading, her devotion to friends, as well as the liveliness and charm of her speech. Many Southerners are natural storytellers, but Peggy told her stories so funny and skillfully that people in a crowded room could listen to her, transfixed, all evening.”
Margaret combined a passion for coquetry and sports entertainment, extraordinary learning abilities and interest in knowledge, a thirst for independence and... the desire to create a good, but completely patriarchal family. Mitchell was not a romantic. Contemporaries considered her practical and even stingy. Legends later circulated about how methodically she extracted royalties from publishers, cent by cent...
While still at school, the lawyer's daughter wrote simple plays in a romantic style for the student theater... After receiving her secondary education, Mitchell studied for a year at the prestigious Massachusetts College. There she was literally hypnotized by the ideas of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. It is quite possible that the American would have become one of his students and followers if not for a tragic event: in 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic, her mother died. And shortly before this, Henry, Margaret’s fiancé, died in Europe.
Desperate Reporter
Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the management of the house. The girl was too young and energetic to be depressed. She did not fussily look for a new party for herself - the suffragist “part” of her nature came into play here. Instead, she chose a career she loved, becoming a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. Margaret's light and sharp pen quickly made her one of the publication's leading journalists. Patriarchal Southern society had a hard time digesting a female journalist. The editor of the publication at first directly told the ambitious girl: “How can a lady from a good family afford to write about the inhabitants of the city’s bottom and talk with various ragamuffins?” Mitchell was surprised by such a question: she had never been able to understand why women are worse than men. This is probably why her heroine Scarlett was one of those about whom in Russia they say in the words of the poet Nekrasov: “He will stop a galloping horse and enter a burning hut.” The reports from the journalist’s pen were crisp, clear, and did not leave the reader with any questions...
Residents of Atlanta recalled: her return to her hometown created a real sensation among the male population. According to rumors, the educated and elegant beauty received almost four dozen marriage proposals from gentlemen! But, as often happens in such situations, the chosen one was far from the best. Miss Mitchell could not resist the charms of Berrien "Red" Upshaw - a tall, handsome man. The groom's witness at the wedding was a modest, educated young man, John Marsh.
Margaret saw family life as a series of entertainments: parties, receptions, horseback riding. Both spouses adored equestrian sports since childhood. The writer also endowed Scarlett with this trait...
Red became the prototype for Rhett - their names are similar. But, unfortunately, only in external manifestations. The husband turned out to be a man of a cruel, violent disposition. Just a little bit - he grabbed the gun. The unfortunate wife had to feel the weight of his fists. Margaret showed here too: she’s not cut out for it. Now there was a gun in her purse too. Soon the couple divorced. All the city gossips watched the humiliating divorce procedure with bated breath. But Mitchell went through this test with her head held high.
Margaret did not remain Mrs. Upshaw for long. And then - I wasn’t even divorced for a year!
In 1925 she married the modest and devoted John Marsh. Finally, quiet happiness settled in her house!
Book for husband
The newly minted Mrs. Marsh resigned from the magazine. Why? Some say: due to an injury received when falling from a horse. Others argue: Margaret decided to devote time to her family. In any case, she once said: “ Married woman must be first and foremost a wife. I am Mrs. John R. Marsh." Of course, Mrs. Marsh was lying. She had no intention of limiting her life to the world of the kitchen. Margaret was clearly tired of reporting and decided to devote herself to literature.
She introduced only her husband to the first chapters of Gone with the Wind. It was he who became her from the first days best friend, critic and advisor. The novel was ready by the end of the 1920s, but Margaret was afraid to publish it. Folders of papers were gathering dust in the closet of the Marsh's new large house. Their home became the center of the town's intellectual life - something like a literary salon. One of the editors of the Macmillan publishing house also dropped by.
Margaret couldn't make up her mind for a long time. But still I gave the manuscript to the editor. Having read it, he immediately realized that he was holding a future bestseller in his hands. It took six months to finalize the novel. The author came up with the final name of the heroine - Scarlett - right in the editorial office. Mitchell took the name from a poem by the poet Dawson.
The publisher was right: the book instantly became a bestseller. And the author became a laureate of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1937. To date, the total circulation of her book in the United States alone has reached almost thirty million copies.
But neither fame nor money brought happiness to the writer. The peace of the house that she and her husband had so protected was disrupted. Margaret herself tried to control cash flows into her own budget. But financial matters only brought fatigue. I no longer had the strength to be creative.
And then faithful John fell ill. Mitchell turned into a caring caregiver. And it turned out to be difficult, because her health began to rapidly deteriorate. By the end of the 1940s, the couple's health began to improve. They even allowed themselves small “cultural” forays. But the returning happiness was short-lived. In August 1949, a car driven by a drunk driver hit Margaret, who was walking with her husband to the cinema. Five days later, the author of Gone with the Wind died.
Biography
American writer. Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8 (in some sources - November 9) 1900 in Atlanta (Georgia, USA), into a wealthy family. The paternal ancestors were from Ireland, the maternal ones were French. During the Civil War between the North and South (1861-1865), both of Margaret's grandfathers fought on the Southern side; one received a bullet in the temple, but accidentally missed the brain, the other hid for a long time from the victorious Yankees. The father of Margaret and her brother Stevens, Eugene Mitchell, a well-known lawyer in Atlanta, a real estate expert, who in his youth dreamed of becoming a writer, was the chairman of the local historical society, thanks to which the children grew up in an atmosphere of stories about the amazing events of the recent era.
Margaret took up literature while still at school: for the school theater she wrote plays about the life of exotic countries, including the history of Russia; loved to dance and ride horses. After graduating from high school, she studied at the seminary. J. Washington, then studied at Smith College in Northampton (Massachusetts) for almost a year, dreaming of going to Austria for an internship with Sigmund Freud. But in January 1919, her mother died of the flu, and Margaret remained at home to care for her sick father. In 1918 in France, in the Battle of the Meuse River, Margaret's fiancé, Lieutenant Clifford Henry, died; Every year on the day of his death she sent flowers to his mother. In 1922, Margaret entered journalism, becoming a reporter and essayist for the Atlanta Journal, specializing in historical essays. All that is known about Margaret’s first marriage is that she did not part with the pistol until she filed for divorce in 1925. After the divorce, her ex-husband (Berry Kinnard Upshaw, nicknamed Red) was found murdered somewhere in the Midwest. In 1925, she remarried to insurance agent John Marsh, at her husband’s request, she left her job as a reporter and settled with him not far from her famous Peach Street. The life of a typical provincial lady began, although Margaret’s house differed from other provincial houses in that it was full of some papers, which both the guests and she herself made fun of. These pieces of paper were the pages of a novel" Gone with the Wind" (Gone with the Wind), created from 1926 to 1936.
The creation of the novel “Gone with the Wind” began in 1926 with the fact that Margaret Mitchell wrote the main phrase of the last chapter: “She could not understand either of the two men she loved, and now she has lost both.” In December 1935, the final (60th!) version of the first chapter was written, and the manuscript was sent to the publishing house. The name of the main character of the novel was found at the last moment - right at the publishing house. It is believed that the main characters of the novel had prototypes: for example, the image of Scarlett reflects many of the character and appearance traits of Margaret Mitchell herself, the image of Rhett Butler may have been created from Red Upshaw, Margaret’s first husband. According to one version, for the title of the book the words were taken from a poem by Horace, arranged by Ernst Dawson: “I forgot a lot, Cinara; blown away by the wind, the scent of these roses was lost in the crowd...”; the estate of the O'Hara family began to be called the same as the ancient capital of the Irish kings - Tara. Margaret herself defined the theme of the novel as “survival”.
The clan of “literary professionals”, consisting of authoritative critics, did not recognize the novel by Margaret Mitchell, an author unknown to anyone at that time. The spokesman for the general opinion of “professional” critics was De Voto, who said that “the number of readers of this book is significant, but not the book itself.” A different assessment of the novel was given by Herbert Wells: “I am afraid that this book is written better than other respected classics.” There were rumors from the literary world that Margaret copied the book from her grandmother's diary or that she paid Sinclair Lewis to write the novel. Despite all this, the novel became a bestseller from the first days of its publication, received the Pulitzer Prize (1938), went through more than 70 editions in the USA, and was translated into many languages of the world.
Margaret Mitchell flatly refused to continue the novel, saying jokingly: “Brought by the Breeze,” a novel in which there will be a highly moral plot in which all the heroes, including Pretty Watling, will have their souls and characters change, and they will all become mired in hypocrisy and stupidity.” She also refused to film a “film about the author of the novel”, refused to give interviews, and did not agree to the use of names associated with the novel in the advertising industry (there were requests for the appearance of the soap “Scarlett”, the men’s toiletry case “Rett”, etc.). , did not allow us to make a musical out of the novel.
In 1939, the novel Gone with the Wind was filmed by director Victor Fleming (Metro Goldwyn Mayer). In 1936, David Selznick, who planned to bring the novel to screen, paid a record amount for that year of 50 thousand dollars, winning the right to film adaptation from the Warner brothers. Margaret, fearing the film's failure, refused to take any part in its creation, including choosing actors for the main roles and helping to prepare the script. As a result, the script was rewritten by many people, passing in a circle from one screenwriter, writer, director to another, including Selznick himself, until he returned to Sidney Howard, who proposed the script, which served as the basis for the film adaptation of the novel. The search for an actress to play Scarlett lasted about two years. The problem of the “actress” was resolved when filming had already begun - in 1938, a beautiful Englishwoman, a student of Catholic monasteries, Vivien Leigh, appeared on the set, very similar to Margaret at the age of 20. Although Margaret Mitchell at that time often reminded that the true heroine of Gone with the Wind was Melanie, and Scarlett could not be such, Scarlett nevertheless became the key figure in the film. The film premiered on December 14, 1939 in Atlanta. The film stars Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara), Clark Gable (Rhett Butler), Olivia de Haviland (Melanie Wilkes), Leslie Howard (Ashley Wilkes), Thomas Mitchell (Gerald O'Hara, Scarlett's father), Barbara O'Neill (Ellyn O'Hara, Scarlett's mother), Hattie McDaniel (Mammy). In 1939, the film Gone with the Wind received eight Oscar awards: best film year; Best Director (Victor Fleming); Best Actress (Vivien Leigh); Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel); Best Adaptation of a Novel to a Screenplay; best cinematography; best artist; best editing. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Olivia De Havilland).
Scarlett's popularity grew at incredible speed. Attempts by reporters to ask Margaret whether she had written off this woman as herself infuriated her: “Scarlett is a prostitute, I am not!” "I have tried to describe a less than admirable woman, about whom there is little good to be said, and I have tried to maintain her character. I find it ridiculous and ridiculous that Miss O'Hara has become something of a national heroine, I think it is very bad - for the moral and mental state of the nation, - if the nation is capable of applauding and being carried away by a woman who behaved in a similar way..." Over time, Margaret gradually warmed up to her creation. At the premiere of the film "Gone with the Wind" she already thanked for the attention "to me and to my poor Scarlett."
Margaret Mitchell died on August 16, 1949 in Atlanta, Georgia, from injuries received in a car accident thanks to a drunk taxi driver.
Sources of information:
“I forgot a lot, Cinara... the scent of roses was carried away by the wind,” this motif from Dawson’s poem migrated into the title of one of the most famous works 20th century - Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind.
“The Book of the Century,” as the Literary History of the United States defines it, quickly became a bestseller. “Gone with the Wind” lost first place in popularity to the Bible, but was firmly in second place. According to some reports, the popularity of Mitchell's novel in 2014 in the United States exceeded the popularity of Potter.
What was the biography of Margaret Mitchell? The writer, the author of the novel that became a cult favorite, seemed to live a completely standard life. What is the secret of this success story?
Life path and beginning of career
Margaret was born into the family of lawyer Eugene Mitchell on November 8, at the turn of the century - in 1900, in Georgia. Southerner Mitchell, a descendant of Scots, was a prominent lawyer in Atlanta and was a member of the historical society. Margaret and her brother Stephen grew up in an atmosphere of interest and respect for the past, which came to life in stories about the events that swept the South during the Civil War.
Already at school, Margaret wrote plays for the school theater and composed adventure stories. Margaret attended Washington Seminary, the prestigious Atlanta Philharmonic, where she founded and became the director of the drama club. She was the editor of Facts and Fantasies, the high school yearbook, and she also earned the post of president of the Washington Literary Society.
In September 1918, Mitchell entered Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was there that her pseudonym, Peggy, appeared. She became interested in ideas and his philosophy. But soon tragedy struck: in January 1919, Margaret’s mother died of the flu.
After that, she returned to Atlanta and soon met Berrien Upshaw. She married him in 1922. However, this marriage did not bring much happiness to the future writer. Four months after the wedding ceremony, Upshaw traveled to the Midwest and never returned.
Shortly after the dissolution of her first marriage, Mitchell entered into a new one, in 1925. Her second husband's name was John Marsh, he worked for a railroad company in the advertising department. The couple settled in a small apartment, which they called “the Dump.”
In 1922, Margaret got a job at the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, for which she wrote about 130 articles and was a proofreader and columnist. She majored in historical writing, using her college pseudonym.
The main creation
Mitchell herself briefly described her work as a “survival novel.” At the same time, the author answered negatively to questions about whether the characters have any prototypes in reality.
The years of Mitchell's life were marked by the suffragette movement, the democratization of morals, the Great Depression and the development of an unprecedented, fundamentally new teaching - psychoanalysis. All this could not but leave its mark on the main character of the novel, who turned out to be, perhaps, too ambitious and purposeful for those times. Mitchell emphasized the absurdity of the situation in which a not-so-positive heroine suddenly became a symbol of America.
The former journalist apparently took the writing of the novel seriously, because only ten years later did it reach the publishers. The first chapter, according to various sources, had 60 options! The name of the main character was decided at the last moment: Scarlett found it when Mitchell was already preparing to submit the manuscript to the publishing house, and at first the heroine’s name was Pansy.
In the end, a gold mine opened up for Macmillan's publishing house - in 1936, the book Gone with the Wind was published. Margaret Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for the novel a year later. Almost from the first days, Mitchell's work captured the attention of the public (more than a million copies were purchased during the first half of the year). The film rights were sold back in those days for $50,000.
In our time, this literary masterpiece does not lose ground: the annual sales of the novel are a quarter of a million copies, it has been translated into twenty-seven languages, and has gone through 70 editions in the United States. Three years after the publication of the novel, an Oscar-winning film was made (receiving eight Oscars), which became no less popular than the book. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh unconditionally won the hearts of those who preferred watching films to reading.
No other novels were published under Mitchell's name. The writer devoted her life to her only literary creation. She handled copyright protection for Gone abroad. In addition, Mitchell personally responded to letters that came to her about the sensational novel.
World War II soon began, and Margaret devoted a lot of time and energy to working for the American Red Cross.
A tragic accident in 1949 cut short the life of an outstanding writer. Margaret and her husband went to the cinema, but on the way they were hit by a car that lost control.
Facts
- Mitchell can hardly be called a lucky person: three car accidents, two falls from a horse, clothes that caught fire right on her (as a result - severe burns), a concussion.
- Margaret was by no means a good girl: she had a sharp tongue and loved collecting “French postcards.”
- The author of Gone with the Wind smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.
- It seems that the writer began writing the novel out of boredom: at least she described her book as “rotten” and claimed that she hated the process of writing.
- She died on August 16, 1949, two years before her 50th birthday and five days after a car accident on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta.
Margaret Munerlyn Mitchell lived a full life, but certainly too short for such an extraordinary person - she managed to write a novel that for decades has consistently occupied the position of one of the most popular books in the world.
It is difficult to explain such great success among the public, because most critics disapproved of Gone with the Wind, and the attitude towards Mitchell’s work is still ambiguous. But in the end, it’s always the readers who decide, and the People’s Choice Award unconditionally belongs to Margaret Mitchell: having written only one book, she went down in history. Author: Ekaterina Volkova
“No, ma’am, I can’t tell you whether Miss Scarlett will get her captain back or not. No, ma'am, Miss Margaret doesn't know either. Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard her say a hundred times that she has no idea what happened to Miss Scarlett when she went home to Tara...” housekeeper Margaret Mitchell says patiently into the phone for the hundredth time. The matter is not limited to calls: curious fans besiege the threshold of the writer’s house, bombard her with letters, and do not allow her passage on the street. Mitchell writes in one of his letters: “I dream of living until the moment when they stop selling my book,” and he’s not being flirtatious.
Charming emancipe
Margaret (Peggy) Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900 in Atlanta, the daughter of a successful lawyer. As a child, nothing foreshadowed a writing career: she didn’t really like reading either. “Mom paid me five cents for every Shakespeare play I read, a ten-kopeck piece for Dickens’s novels, and for books by Nietzsche, Kant and Darwin I received 15 cents... But even when the rate rose to 25 cents, I could not read either Tolstoy or Hardy , nor Thackeray,” she admits later. However, already in her teens, the girl began writing stories, and in 1922 she shocked her circle by getting a job as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal newspaper: this occupation at that time was considered purely male. The editor was rather reluctant to hire what he thought was a pampered girl, but it turned out that she was capable of writing on any topic from fashion to history and politics and conducting excellent interviews with Rudolph Valentino and other celebrities.
Although Mitchell will forever resent attempts to draw parallels between her and Scarlett O'Hara, one analogy is inevitable: in the ability to shock the public, Peggy, perhaps, could give her heroine a head start. In conservative Atlanta, which had not yet reached the liberties of the “Jazz Age,” she could perform an apache dance at a decorous debutante ball, be photographed in men’s clothing, and change admirers so often that at some point she found herself engaged to five men at once. Beautiful, red-haired, she was, by her own description, “one of those tough women with short hair and short skirts, about whom the priests say that by the age of 30 they will either be on the gallows or in hell.”
Mitchell could perform the Apache dance at a formal debutante ball, be photographed in men's clothing, and change admirers so often that at some point she found herself engaged to five men at once.
By 1922, gossip columns reported that Peggy had received more marriage proposals than any other girl in Atlanta. Alas, she chose the wrong thing. The husband, a charming bootlegger with defiant manners, turned out to be prone to drunkenness and aggression and, in addition, got mixed up with the maids. So just ten months later, Mitchell filed for divorce—another unheard-of scandal in conservative Atlanta.
The second marriage, concluded three years later, turned out to be much stronger. Margaret lived with insurance agent John Marsh, who was best man at her last wedding, until the end of her life - perhaps because he was the complete opposite of her first husband. Having married him, Margaret radically changed her lifestyle: she quit her job, fell in love with seclusion and, as it seemed to the family who breathed a sigh of relief, she finally began to lead the life of a normal American housewife.
“How are they going to sell anything?”
In fact, the next seven years - from 1926 to 1933 - were spent creating the novel. And for constant self-criticism: what she wrote seemed to her to be pitiful amateur experiments that would be awkward to show even to her husband (he, however, did not share her skepticism and supported her as best he could).
Margaret Mitchell (center). Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS / FOTOLINK / East News
The completed novel lay on the table for two years before she took the risk of giving the manuscript to a literary agent at Macmillan. She gave it away - and then in a panic she sent a telegram asking for it back; fortunately, the agent had already started reading. “I can’t understand how they are going to sell anything,” she was perplexed in a conversation with her husband when the publishing house offered her a contract. “Don’t worry: you and I have so many relatives that we will sell at least 5 thousand copies in Georgia alone,” he answered.
The title of the novel and the name of the main character appeared just before publication. Scarlett's name during the writing process was Pansy, and the novel was entitled Tomorrow Is a New Day. The publishers did not like the title, and the writer offered 24 options instead: “Gone with the Wind” came at No. 17, but with a note that Mitchell herself liked it the most.
The publishers did not like the title “Tomorrow will be a new day”, and the writer offered 24 options instead: “Gone with the Wind” came at number 17.
Another request from the publishers concerned the ending of the novel: the reviewers seriously persuaded Mitchell to change the final chapter so as not to upset sensitive readers with a sad ending. But Margaret, who began writing the book from the end and built the whole storyline, didn’t give up: “I’ll change whatever you want, just not the end.” And she turned out to be right: the open ending of the novel will be discussed for the next 80 years.
Copper pipes
The success of “Gone with the Wind” at home has nothing to compare with: in the first three weeks - 176 thousand copies sold, in the first year - 1 million 200 thousand, a Pulitzer Prize, compliments from H.G. Wells, not to mention endless commercial offers.
But Mitchell's lack of success is more annoying than pleasing. She hates forced publicity, cannot stand speeches and autograph sessions, and most of all, crazy visitors who besiege the house from morning to evening. So when it comes to filming a film, she gives permission with the condition: “I don’t want to take on the work of a screenwriter, I don’t want to be a consultant on the set. I want exactly the opposite: for no one to bother me and my family under any pretext. I don’t care about casting, filming, or promoting the film. Give me silence. Forget about me."
Margaret Mitchell, 1937 Photo: AP Photo/East News
I don’t want to take on the work of a screenwriter, I don’t want to be a consultant on the set. I don’t care about casting, filming, or promoting the film. Give me silence. Forget about me.
Nevertheless, rumors immediately appear in the newspapers that it is Mitchell who is picking up all cast, and young talents are joining the exalted fans of the novel, demanding to get them into the cinema. “You will laugh, but several ladies have already sent me photos of their little daughters elegantly doing the splits. The ladies admit that they have never read Gone with the Wind, but they ask to use their daughters in the leading role of the film version of the novel. People are pushing their butchers and cooks so that I can give them a ticket to Hollywood to play Mammy and Uncle Peter. If I ever get a chance to rest, I might laugh about it, but not now.”
The offended public takes this reaction for posturing and arrogance. Fantastic rumors that spread like a virus become revenge for refusing to expose your life to the public. And if some of them turn out to be unworthy nonsense (she has a wooden leg, and she wrote a novel in bed in a plaster corset; she was saved from blindness by a surgeon who operated on the Siamese king), then others deeply wound the writer. They concern the authorship of Gone with the Wind.
Probably, suspicions of plagiarism are the fate of all authors of one book. In the case of Mitchell, there are three main “versions”: according to the first, she copied the novel from her grandmother’s diary, the second attributes the authorship to her husband, and the third to the recent Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis, whom Margaret allegedly paid to write the novel. Rumors that do not stand up to serious criticism will not stop even after the death of the writer (in August 1949, she will be hit by a drunk driver while she and her husband are going to the cinema): the will, according to which almost all of her archives will be burned, will only inflame the gossipers.
Meanwhile, other, much more real facts from Mitchell’s biography remain unnoticed by the public. Thus, almost no one will know that during World War II, Margaret not only was a Red Cross volunteer and made large donations to the American army, but also personally wrote dozens of letters of support to the soldiers.
The Amazing Adventures of Scarlett in Russia
Mitchell flatly refused to write a sequel to the book and forbade others to do so. However, after the death of the writer and her husband, there was no one to stop the greedy publishers, and a sequel by Alexandra Ripley was published, where Scarlett suddenly finds herself at the center of the struggle for Irish independence.
More life is more interesting Scarlett and her friends developed in the post-Soviet space. Soviet readers read Gone with the Wind quite late (the first edition was published only in 1986) and longed for new stories about their favorite heroes, and for the era of “wild capitalism” that followed, nothing was impossible. Therefore, in the 90s, bookstores were flooded with an unimaginable number of sequels, prequels and other books “based on” which were written about in Scarlett’s homeland (as well as elsewhere, except former USSR) no one heard. The earliest chronologically covered the lives of Scarlett and Rhett's ancestors up to the fifth generation; in the later ones, the heroes were already well over a hundred, but they continued to sort things out just as dramatically.
The book "Gone with the Wind" by M. Mitchell is undoubtedly a masterpiece of the world classics. However, as regards this particular publication... I was somewhat disappointed by L. Summ's article "The House on Peach Street". After reading it, I was left with an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, it contains many different facts from the life of the writer, but on the other, the desire to read the book itself has already diminished after studying this article, because the subjective opinion of the author and the disclosure of the content of the plot discourage the desire to read the novel. In my opinion, this work should not have been placed at the beginning of the book. It is important for the reader to experience the content himself, draw his own conclusions, and not rely on the opinion of another person, even if he is a famous writer who conducted some specific analysis, capturing different aspects of the writer’s biography, with elements of his own opinion. You should not force a certain point of view on the reader. He will figure everything out on his own, because that’s why he bought this book. As for the novel itself, M. Mitchell. This work grabs you from the first page. The accessible, easy language of the book describes the difficult time of the events of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the life of a specific person - southerner Scarlett O'Hara, who will have to survive the war itself and the period of Reconstruction, as well as deal with life and understand what is in It has value. A great book for all times!
Read more 
An entire era gone with the wind
There are people who believe that humanity has not yet written anything more brilliant than "War and Peace" and " Quiet Don"Supposedly, only in them is the entire palette of feelings and topics that are generally possible to be covered in literary work. This is the reasoning of those who do not want to look beyond exclusively classical Russian literature. There are world works that deal with all possible universal themes. One such work is “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell.
There is love between a man and a woman. Love for the Motherland - oh, yes. Mother's love- Please. The problem of war - the entire first volume. The problem of post-war life is entirely second. Social inequality is also covered. Life path- all characters draw their own. The problem of fathers and children is also present. The list goes on and on.
Margaret Mitchell's first and only novel gained truly worldwide fame. Envious people started a rumor that the writer simply stole the story from her grandmother’s personal diary, although I don’t see anything criminal in this. Margaret's most frequently asked question was the expected one: “Do you identify with Scarlett O'Hara?” To which Mitchell invariably replied: “Scarlett is a whore, and I am not. How did you even allow yourself to ask me this?" The writer herself planned to do the main character novel by Melanie Wilkes... but something went wrong. Now it is Scarlett who is a symbol of the era, a role model, and for me also a role model. The first businesswoman - no more no less! Strong girl, you can't argue with that.
The novel is skillfully written and took a lot of time to create. But this time is not wasted. Mitchell rewrote individual episodes twenty times, and she wrote the entire novel out of chronological order! It is a titanic work to compile all this into one coherent text. Great text. Brilliant.
My boundless respect for the author and everyone who read this novel.
“...the whole world, blown away by the wind...”
Opening this book, we are immersed in beautiful world Old South. Into a world where real gentlemen and true ladies live. In a world where no one is in a hurry. Into a world where you want to stay forever. But along with Civil War this world comes to an end, and we see the collapse of an entire civilization. Broken dreams and hopes for a bright future, burned houses and entire cities, and most importantly, killed people. No, not those killed by a bullet or shell - although there are infinitely many of them - but people with a lost soul and a broken heart. Those whose ideas about life turned out to be incorrect. Those who were being prepared for a completely different life. Those who have nothing else. And at the center of this story is a woman who has lost all her loved ones one by one; a woman who had to shoulder an unbearable burden; a woman who suddenly found herself at the bottom, but fought her way up and clung to everything with her hands and feet, just to stay afloat; a woman who has abandoned good manners and entered into “friendship” with her enemies; a woman who survived in critical times and looks straight ahead, leaving everyone and everything behind her; a woman worthy of praise for her courage and fortitude; the woman who never lived but will never die; a woman whose name is Scarlett O'Hara.
This woman did everything possible. She changed, threw away good manners and everything that she could do well without, did not care about the opinion of society, overcame her pride, killed a man, endured fear and humiliation, the inability to do anything and uncertainty about the future. She did everything, but she turned out to be blind to those who really love her and who she really loves.
Melanie Hamilton. Oh, how Scarlett disliked this woman! And not for any personal qualities, but only because Melanie married Ashley. Melanie, whose heart was so kind, could not even think that Scarlett hated her. She lived in her own little world, where neither fear, nor hatred, nor pain, nor cruelty, nor anything that the war brought with it could pass. Mellie was always by Scarlett's side and was ready to sacrifice her life for her. She protected her from evil looks and words and could not understand why everyone hated the eldest of the O'Hara sisters so fiercely. Scarlett was able to understand that she loved this woman, weak on the outside, but strong on the inside, only when she was dying. She realized that Mellie always stood behind her, and now, dying, she involuntarily takes away all the strength and support that she gave her during all these turning points. Scarlett does not lose her inner core, but she loses what she considered natural all this time.
But Scarlett loved Ashley Wilkes from the very beginning. And what’s more, Ashley thought that he himself was in love with this charming green-eyed girl. Scarlett spent too many years “loving” this dreamy young man, who turned out to be a stranger in the new world; she lost too much because of this. Melanie's death acted as a ray of common sense for both of them. Ashley realized that all this time he had loved Melanie and only her, and Scarlett realized that love for this fair-haired young man was just a habit, reinforced by confidence and the inability to see what was already obvious. Melanie was the inner core for Ashley - and for many, many other people - and when she was gone, Ashley lost the last thing worth living for, and Scarlett, who would gladly throw him away now, was bound by a promise to the woman she loved almost as much much like your own mother. Scarlett received another child who was to be looked after and patronized for the rest of her life.
Being stubborn and unable to see the obvious, Scarlett believed until the end that she loved Ashley. And only when everything became obvious did she understand simple thing, which she should have realized a long time ago: she loves Rhett, she really does.
Rhett Butler is a man whose name is associated with everything bad among the people of the South. A man abandoned by his own father to the mercy of fate without a penny in his pocket, but nevertheless earned a lot of money and got on his feet on his own. Rhett is a man who, having fallen in love with the cruel Scarlett O'Hara, was ready to love her so tenderly and reverently, but by her will he was unable to do this. He is the one who has never lost in anything, lost this fight. Both of them lost.
They were created for each other, they both loved freedom, money, independence, they both did not belong to the society in which they were born and lived. They loved each other so beautifully, hating each other, that it seemed they should be together.
But, faced with each other, so similar, they acted the same: they did not show each other their true feelings, but they were just rude. They loved each other, Rhett loved consciously, but Scarlett did not, and they were so afraid that this feeling was not mutual that they could not show what was really in their hearts.
We cannot say for sure whether Rhett truly believed that his love had worn out and that he no longer loved this woman. But we know for sure that Scarlett’s stubbornness and tenacity will not allow her to let him go. She has always achieved her goals and now she will do everything possible and impossible to get him back. And he will return, unless it’s too late...
A novel about life
This novel is not only about love, it is a novel about life. About the struggle for life. Gone with the wind... By the wind of war, which not only carried away, but scattered people across the country, the previous way of life, family values. Life goes on, but at what cost? This book makes you admire the courage of people, their perseverance, and loyalty to their ideals.
This is a story about fragile southern women who keep their home in any conditions, remaining “ladies”. This is a tribute to the Southern men who defended their country and freedom. This is the South of the United States of America, which no longer exists, but which will be admired and, at the same time, horrified for many, many years to come.
But this is also a love story. Or rather, several stories that are closely intertwined into one. Rhett and Scarlett, Melanie and Ashley, Gerald O'Hara and Ellyn Robillard O'Hara, Scarlett's sisters and their lovers. Tragic and happy destinies. Different people. One era.
