Gone With The Wind

About the Book

“After all, tomorrow is another day!” It’s April 1861. Georgia, southern United States. Scarlet O’Hara—the vivacious, narcissistic, and pampered daughter of a plantation owner in Atlanta—in a fit of choleric contempt over rejection by her desired man, Ashley Wilkes, hurls a figurine against the wall. And behind the depths of the sofa, Rhett Butler is woken up from his nap. “You’re no gentleman,” fires the southern belle. “And you’re no lady!” the rogue fires back. Scarlet, for vengeance, accepts the marriage proposal from Charles Hamilton—Ashley Wilke’s brand new brother-in-law. But at the outbreak of the American Civil War he joins the army and dies of pneumonia followed by measles, a not-so-gallantry death. Through wiles and widowhood, Scarlet manages to keep her independence and becomes an astute business woman. Rhett Butler—the dark, flashy, and scandalous visitor from Charleston—who is a professional gambler and blockade runner, is enamoured by her survival instincts. Around the social turmoils of the war, what becomes of O’Hara and Rhett Butler, an outcast whom she marries for money? The only novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind continues to seduce and rock the world seventy-nine years after its publication.

About the Author
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1900, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell belonged to a wealthy and a politically prominent family. She spent her early childhood on Jackson Hill, east of downtown Atlanta, and grew up in Southern culture. Encouraged by her husband, she began writing the novel that would become Gone with the Wind. Nine complete drafts of the thousand-page work, she set this epic romance against the dramatic backdrop of the Civil War. Published in 1936, ten years after she began writing it, Gone with the Wind was a smash success. It became, and still remains, one of the classic masterpieces of all time. Receiving a Pulitzer Prize in 1937, a film version of the novel was planned in the late 1930s. It was her only novel published during her lifetime.