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Gone With the Wind Essay

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Gone with the Wind, was published in May 1936. The author, Atlanta born, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her efforts. The novel was the first and only published novel of her career. Miss Mitchell was a storyteller from the time she could speak. She enjoyed writing stories and plays. She would cast herself and her friends in the different roles. She lived in Atlanta all of her life and she was enchanted in the history of the city. Miss Mitchell was influenced by the stories told to her as she spent her childhood sitting on the laps of Civil War veterans and of her mother's relatives, who told stories of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South. She was an old soul at heart and enjoyed the …show more content…

Selling over thirty million copies, it is the best-selling novel of the twentieth century. In fact, it was so popular it was translated in roughly forty languages and published in fifty different countries. In the seventy five years since its publication, the novel has achieved the status of an epic. The only book that has sold more copies than Gone With the Wind is the Bible. It is a masterpiece of American literature, and highly suggested to those who enjoy Civil War fiction because of its historical accurateness. Mitchell once wrote the following about her novel. "Despite its length and many details it is basically just a simple yarn of fairly simple people. There's no fine writing, there's no philosophizing, there is a minimum of description, there are no grandiose thoughts, there are no hidden meanings, no symbolism, nothing sensational." The novel is the basis of the exceptionally admired Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. The film rights were acquired to the novel in July, 1936 for fifty thousand dollars. That was a record amount for a novel from an unknown author. Once the film was released the novel had surpassed one half million copies sold. Additional records were set when the movie had its first air date on television in two parts in 1976. It was restored and released in theaters in

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