"Gone With The Wind" Is Published

Gone with the Wind is a romantic drama and the only novel written by Margaret Mitchell.

It is set in Jonesboro and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. and follows the life of Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation owner.

The novel won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1939 film of the same name. It was also adapted during the 1970s into a stage musical Scarlett; there is also a 2008 new musical stage adaptation in London's West End titled Gone With The Wind. It is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime, and it took her seven years to write it and a further eight months to check the thousands of historical and social references. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 30 million copies (see list of best-selling books). Over the years, the novel has also been analyzed for its symbolism and treatment of mythological archetypes.

Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind." The novel's protagonist. Scarlett O'Hara, also uses the title phrase in a line in the book: when her home area is overtaken by the Yankees, she wonders to herself if her home, a plantation called Tara, is still standing, or if it was "also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia". More generally, the title has been interpreted as referring to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The prologue of the movie refers to the old way of life in the South as "gone with the wind."

The book was almost titled quoting the end line in the book, "Tomorrow is another day"; but the publisher at the time noted there were several books close to the same title, so she was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen.