Wednesday, June 30, 2010

This Day in History: GONE WITH THE WIND

Speaking of historical novels (which I love to do) Gone With The Wind was published on this day in 1936.  And it all began because Margaret Mitchell was forced to quit her day job to cope with some physical problems.  Which just goes to show hard times can produce some amazing things!

I just travelled through Atlanta yesterday but alas!  No time to visit the Margaret Mitchell House.  Will have to put that on my list of literary places to visit.

And did you know that Scarlett was actually Pansy before the editor suggested a change!  I'd call that a historic decision!

4 comments:

  1. Oh! Something in common with Margaret Mitchell...now if I can just get that publishing thing in common!

    Here's a wave from SW Georgia.

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  2. Margaret Mitchell's editor at Macmillan lived in my hometown. He was the one to change the heroine's name from Pansy to Scarlett. Mitchell came to my town, Kearny, to christen the USS Atlanta in 1941 at our shipyards.

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  3. GWTW was the first really long, grown-up book I read as a (what we'd now call) Tween reader. I finished it during the summer between 6th and 7th grades and I think my hardback copy had 1034 pages in it!

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  4. Ghost Girl - you are on your way to publication. My fingers are crossed for you!
    Barabara - that's a pretty cool claim to fame - being from the same town as Mitchell's editor!
    Augusta, you read GWTW at a younger age than I did. Maybe you were preparing to become a librarian. Grrrreat book, though, huh?

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