Margaret Mitchell

Mitchell was pictured on a one-cent American postage stamp in the "Great Americans" series, and hers was issued for sale at post offices on June 30, 1986.

Margaret Mitchell stated that she would never write a sequel to "Gone With the Wind". After her death, her husband John Marsh became the executor of her estate, and when Mr. Marsh passed away in 1952, Margaret's brother Stephens Mitchell became the executor. During his lifetime, Stevens firmly refused to grant publication rights to any sequel (in print or on film), and he also rejected the idea of any film remake of "GWTW". Only after death of Stephens was a sequel novel authorized by Ms. Mitchell's estate. The title of the sequel is "Scarlett", and it was later presented as a made-for-TV movie.

On August 11, 1949, Ms. Mitchell was crossing Peachtree Street in Atlanta to enter a movie theater with her husband John Marsh. She was hit by a speeding automobile that was driven by an off-duty taxi driver (driving his own car, not a taxicab) and was badly injured. She was taken to the Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, but she passed away five days later without ever regaining consciousness.

She is known for her work on Gone with the Wind (1939), Luan shi yao ji (1956) and E o Vento Levou (1956). She was married to John R. Marsh and Berrien Kinnard "Red" Upshaw.

In 1936, the movie producer David O. Selznick bought the film rights to Margaret Mitchell's novel for $50,000. However, after Gone with the Wind (1939) had become a very best-selling film, Mr. Selznick decided that he had drastically underpaid Ms. Mitchell, and he sent her an additional $50,000.

Margaret Mitchell claimed that she had never intended to publish "Gone With the Wind". In 1935, a friend of hers told Harold Latham, a visiting editor from the MacMillan publishing company, about the book. After some persuasion, Ms. Mitchell took the manuscript to his hotel. Mr. Latham stated that the stack of papers was almost as tall as Margaret was. Most of the pages had become mildewed and the book's chapters were out of order. After Margaret gave her manuscript to Mr. Latham she changed her mind about its possible publication and requested that he send the manuscript back to her. Mr. Lathams declined to do so. After reading the manuscript he realized that he had a very good book and published "Gone with the Wind" in 1936. It literally became an overnight success selling over a million copies in six months time and one million seven hundred thousand copies within a year of publication. It was in those days and is said to be still the second most printed book in the world, second only to the bible.

Ms. Mitchell began writing "Gone With the Wind" in 1926, after breaking her ankle in the same spot that she had broken it in a fall from a horse when she was a girl.

Mitchell's writing career began as a journalist for the "Atlanta Journal" newspaper in 1922. She continued at the Atlanta Journal until a broken ankle forced her to resign in 1926.

Miss Mitchell attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachussetts, for one academic year, 1918 - 19. She dropped out of college when her mother became ill with the flu during the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Maybelle Mitchell, Margaret's mother, died of the flu in January 1919. At that time Margaret returned home to Atlanta to take care of her father's home. She never returned to college at Smith or anywhere else. Smith College did award Ms. Mitchell, however, an honorary college degree after her novel, "Gone with the Wind", won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Literature in 1937.

Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA as Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell.