Books

First edition, first printing, in the first issue dust jacket, signed by author on the half-title. Mitchell ceased signing copies around six months after publication having been inundated with requests. She reaffirmed this stance weeks before her death in 1949: "I was forced to adopt a 'no autographing' policy and since that time I have not altered it" (cited in Harwell, p. 425). Mitchell's sole published novel met with immediate acclaim and record-breaking sales, winning her the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The film adaptation, starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, followed in 1939. Due to their enduring but not uncontroversial popularity, both the novel and the film have become touchstones for subsequent representations and discussions of the Reconstruction era in American popular culture. The first printing is dated May, rather than June, on the copyright page. Dust jackets in the first issue advertise this title on the rear panel in the second row of the second column. Octavo. Original grey cloth, spine and front cover lettered and stamped with wind devices in dark blue, top edge pale brown, fore edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. Housed in a custom green quarter morocco and grey cloth slipcase and grey cloth chemise. Rubbing to board edges, light offsetting to endpapers; sharp jacket unclipped, creasing and nicks to edges, tiny chips to fold ends: a near-fine copy in like jacket. Richard Harwell, ed., Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind Letters, 1936-1949, 1976.

Gone with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to come out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman's March to the Sea.