Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949)

(The book was dramatized by David O. Selznick and released three years later. The official premiere of the film occurred in Atlanta in December, 1939.)

Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her childhood, it seems, was spent in the laps of Civil War veterans, and her maternal relatives, who lived through the war and the years to follow. They told her everything about the war except that the Confederates had lost it. She was ten years old before making this discovery.

She attended Smith College, but withdrew following her final exams in 1919. She returned to Atlanta to take over the household after her mother's death earlier that year. Shortly afterward, she joined the staff of The Atlanta Journal where she wrote a weekly column for the newspaper's Sunday edition.

She is reported to have begun writing Gone With the Wind while bedridden and nursing a broken ankle. The house where she lived while writing her manuscript is known today as "The Margaret Mitchell House". Located in Midtown Atlanta, it is a major tourist destination.

A prestigious newspaper writer as well as an author, Mitchell was struck by a speeding off-duty taxi driver as she crossed Peachtree Street with husband John Marsh in August 1949. She died five days later from her injuries.