Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell (born November 8, 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia - died August 16, 1949 in Atlanta) was the author of Gone With the Wind, winner of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the basis for the Academy Award-winning film of the same name released in 1939.

Mitchell reportedly spent several weeks in Birmingham in the early 1920s. She had left Smith College in 1918 to take over her mother's household after her death from the Spanish flu. She began working as a Sunday magazine columnist for the Atlanta Journal (under the name Peggy Mitchell). She was, at the time, likely being courted by both Berrien Upshaw and John Marsh. She married Upshaw in 1922 but found him to be abusive and was soon divorced. In 1925 she married Marsh, publicity director for what became the Georgia Power Company. A year later, forced to leave reporting due to a broken ankle, Mitchell, with her husband's support, began writing what was published ten years later as Gone With the Wind.

Before she married, Mitchell spent some time in Birmingham rooming with Augusta Dearborn, an assistant society editor for the Birmingham News. Dearborn lived in a house at the corner of 15th Avenue South and 18th Street in Southside.

In 2009, artist Ben South became interested when he heard that Mitchell may have lived in Birmingham and contacted Birmingham Public Library archivist Jim Baggett to help research the possibility and identify the house.

References

• Thomas, Jane (March 21, 2008) "Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)" New Georgia Encyclopedia
• Hansen, Jeff (July 7, 2009) "Iconic author Margaret Mitchell, author of "Gone with the Wind', may have lived for a time on Birmingham's Southside." The Birmingham News