Margaret marnell Lynn Mitchell (1900165438+1October 8th, Atlanta, Georgia-1August 94916th, Atlanta, Georgia) is an American writer and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Gone with the Wind is still one of the best-selling novels, with more than 30 million copies published so far. In particular, the adaptation film 1939 was released, which became the highest-grossing film in Hollywood film history and won ten Oscars. Margaret is studying at Smith College in Massachusetts. Later, because my mother died of illness, my family needed her to take charge of housework, so I had to drop out of school. From 1922, she began to write for Atlanta Daily with her nickname "Peggy". In the next four years, 129 signed and a large number of unsigned manuscripts appeared in newspapers. One of the manuscripts was a special report written by Margaret for past Confederate generals. After the marriage failed, Margaret married John Marsh, the advertising director of Georgia Thermal Power Company, on 1925. 1926, Margaret had to quit her job as a newspaper because of a leg injury. Encouraged by her husband, she began to devote herself to creation. Margaret later told People that it took her nearly 10 years to write Gone with the Wind. In fact, the first drafts of most chapters of the novel were completed as early as 1929. She finished the last chapter of the novel first, and then came back to write the first few chapters, but she never wrote in the order of events, but wrote wherever she thought. For nearly 10 years, Margaret seldom mentioned her manuscript to her friends. Although many people know what she is writing, few people know what she is writing. 1935 In the spring, Harold latham, editor of Macmillan Publishing Company, collected manuscripts all over the country. When he came to Atlanta, he occasionally heard about Margaret's book. At first, Margaret denied that she was writing a novel because she didn't believe that southerners' views on the civil war could interest northern publishers. As a result, the day before latham left Atlanta, Margaret sent her manuscript nearly five feet thick. In July of the same year, McWhae Lun Company decided to publish this novel, tentatively entitled "Tomorrow is a New Day". Since then, Margaret has spent half a year repeatedly verifying the specific time and place of historical events involved in the novel. She quoted a poem by Ernest Dawson, an American poet, and changed the title of the novel to Gone with the Wind. At the same time, Macmillan also made a lot of publicity. Therefore,1June 30, 936, once the masterpiece of this unknown writer was published, its sales immediately broke many records in the American publishing industry: the daily sales reached the peak of 50,000 copies; Issued100000 copies in the first 6 months; 2 million copies in the first year. Subsequently, this novel won the Pulitzer Prize of 1937 and the American Publishers Association Award. In the year when the novel came out, Hollywood bought the right to adapt Gone with the Wind into a movie for $50,000. The film Gone with the Wind directed by David Selznick and starring clark gable and Vivien Leigh was released on 1939. For more than half a century, this novel with a thickness of more than 1000 pages has been in the forefront of American bestsellers. By the end of 1970s, novels had been translated into 27 languages and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. The publication of Gone with the Wind made Margaret a celebrity in the American literary world almost overnight, and became a household name "heroine" in Atlanta. This sudden fame completely changed her life. 1936 On July 8, nine days after Gone with the Wind was published, Margaret told her experience in a letter to a professor in Florida: "I didn't know that a writer's life would be like this. If I had known in advance, I would never have tried to be a writer. In the past few decades, my life has been very peaceful. This is a lifestyle I choose, because I am not good at interacting with people; Because I want to work and like to be quiet; And because of poor health, I need to rest. In recent days, my life has completely lost that quiet atmosphere. " Margaret's maid also recalled, "On the day when the novel was published, the phone rang every three minutes, someone knocked at the door every five minutes, and a telegram came to the door every seven minutes. A dozen people stood at the door of the apartment, waiting for Margaret to come out so that she could sign the novel. " There is an endless stream of people who ask for interviews, invite Margaret to give speeches all over the world, and even ask her to donate to various charities. In the first week alone, 300 copies of Gone with the Wind were sent to her from all over the country. These admirers want her to sign and pay. The ensuing disputes over copyright and translation rights plunged her into a series of legal affairs. So it's not hard to understand why Margaret didn't publish any works after Gone with the Wind was published until she died in a car accident in August 1949. But she left many letters. Her collection of letters (1976) was published by Macmillan Company, entitled Gone with the Wind in Margaret Mitchell; Letters. "