"I don't see how the book could be made into a movie" 
-M. Mitchell

STORY BEHIND THE BOOK

 The title...

The final title had not been agreed upon until the very last moment, right before the book was published. The working title all along had been "Tomorrow is Another Day" but neither Margaret Mitchell nor the publisher were satisfied with it. Other suggestions included "Another Day", "Tote the Weary Load", "Not in Our Stars", "Bugles Sang True". Finally "Gone with the Wind" was decided upon by the author and the publisher but it did not come from the Bible as it was thought to have. It caught Ms. Mitchell's eye in the first line of the third stanza in Ernest Dowson's (1867-1900) poem,

The title Gone with the Wind was thought to have been taken from James Clarence Mangan's (1803–1849) poem "Gone with the Wind". In one of her letters, Ms. Mitchell admitted that she was not familiar with this poem beforehand. It was suggested that Dowson might have gotten the phrase from Mangan's poem.

Published at last...

Peggy Marsh didn't want people to know she was working on a book and she never intended to sell it. The only other person who had read the manuscript was her husband, John Marsh. But one of those friends who knew that Peggy was writing a book, Lois Cole happened to be working for the Macmillian, a publishing company in New York. In 1935, due to readers' interest in novels by authors from the South, the company sent editor Harold Latham on a tour of the Southern States. On Lois's suggestion he called on Mrs. Marsh but his offer was refused on the grounds that the book was in a very poor shape. Nevertheless Peggy arranged a meeting at her house for hopeful young writers and writers-to-be so that they could talk to Mr. Lantham. Among the guest was a young girl determined to write her own novel, but apparently not quite knowing how to get about doing it. As Peggy was riding her and her friends home after the tea party someone brought up the subject of Peggy's book. The girl was very astonished to hear that, because in her opinion Mrs. Marsh just wasn't 'the type' that would write a successful book. Besides, she went on, Peggy could not really consider herself an author because, unlike herself, she had never been refused by the very best publishers.
Peggy got mad, and spontaneous as she was, she went home, collected the scattered parts of her novel and called on Mr. Lantham in his hotel to hand him the still unfinished manuscript just as he was about to leave Atlanta. The idea as Ms. Mitchell put it, was that at least she could "brag that she had been refused by the very best publisher." The rumor has it that the manuscript was so big that he had to buy an extra suitcase to carry it. It was only after he left, that Peggy quite realized what she had done. But it was too late - Macmillian became interested and offered to buy it. A publication date was set for May 1936 and Peggy worked hard in the following months to meet the deadline. The book was finished by January 1936 and it was printed as planned in May although the official publication date (when advertising and reviews begin) was put off till June 30th (the Book of the Month Club had chosen it as its July featured selection).

Reactions...

Public's reaction to the book was more enthusiastic than Miss Mitchell ever hoped for. The first batch of 10 000 copies was sold out instantaneously and in the few days after the publication another 100 000 copies were already being shipped around the country - people everywhere were reading this book and Margaret Mitchell became an overnight celebrity.

Critics' reaction varied: some called the work superb, some thought it full of cliches. Some even questioned the book's historical accuracy. (Well in my humble opinion by finding faults critics are doing their job - we do respect them for sharing their wisdom with us but that doesn't exactly mean we have to agree with them. And after all it's the public's opinion that counts - and the main determinant of success).

It does seem that reactions varied along sectional lines. It was not common back then to write about the Civil War from the South's point of view. Some people thought that the author managed to remain objective and above it all, some could tell that it was in fact written by a Southerner, by the nostalgia for the bygone days that shone through some parts of the book.

This instant fame was more than Margaret Mitchell could take: it changed her life considerably. Everywhere she went she was plagued with reporters, with fans, people on the streets who 'just wanted to know what happened next'. She received huge amounts of fan mail which she answered to the best of her ability. She was physically exhausted and would often escape to seek peace and quiet in a cottage in the mountains.

In 1937 the book won the Pulitzer Prize.

historical accuracy...

The historical accuracy was one of the things that critics applauded most. Margaret Mitchell had done a very extensive research to show historical as well as sociological aspects of the period.
She said that she never aimed at looking at that era from any historical perspective, but the book was written from the viewpoint of a person living at that time. The book got some pretty good reviews from historians.

Probably the first critics to bring up the subject of historical accuracy was Ralph Thompson, who reviewed GWTW on the pages of New York Times on June 30, 1936. Although, according to him, "the historical background is the chief virtue of the book" he also noted that "there are a good many questionable touches to the dialogue--the word 'sissy' (implying an effeminate man) is put into the mouths of characters a whole generation too early, and such expressions as 'on the make,' 'like a bat out of hell,' 'Götterdämmerung,' and 'survival of the fittest,' sound very strange upon the tongues of Civil War Southerners."
In one of her letters Peggy cleared some of it up. As for the word 'Götterdämmerung', (the title of R. Wagner's opera) she noted that in fact the opera was produced several years after the war, but the poems were written at least two decades earlier. As for the word 'sissy' she said that she found it in a letter from 1861 in which a boy wrote to his father that he didn't want to join any Zouaves because he would feel like a sissy in those red pants...

There were many historical facts that readers found particularily interesting and wrote to Ms. Mitchell about: the question of the troop movement before the battle of Chickamauga, the descretion of the Atlanta City Cemetery by Federal Troops, the military part of gwtw- the Sherman-Johnson campaign, the use of the word 'la grippe' (an influenza) etc.

the rights to the book are sold...

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