Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American novelist and journalist. Born in Atlanta, Georgia to a prominent Southern family, Mitchell grew up surrounded by Civil War veterans whose stories deeply shaped her sensibilities. She attended Smith College for one year before her mother's death from the 1918 influenza pandemic brought her home to manage the family household. Mitchell wrote for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine from 1922 to 1926, publishing 139 feature articles, 85 news stories, and a celebrated advice column. After leaving the paper due to an ankle injury, she spent nearly a decade writing her only published novel during her lifetime. Gone with the Wind was released by Macmillan in June 1936, sold a million copies in six months, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937, and has remained continuously in print, translated into more than 40 languages with over 30 million copies sold worldwide. Despite the novel's enormous commercial and cultural success, Mitchell wrote no further fiction and largely retreated from public life. She was struck by an off-duty taxi driver while crossing Peachtree Street in Atlanta on August 11, 1949, and died of her injuries five days later at age 48. A second manuscript, Lost Laysen, written in 1916, was discovered and published posthumously in 1996. Her Atlanta apartment is preserved today as the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.