by R. M. Ziegler

Created on: October 01, 2008

Before she was able to write, Margaret Mitchell was creating stories. As a child she would not know of the blockbuster status of the epic she would eventually write. Begun as a source of amusement, Gone With The Wind was not intentionally written for publication. When it was published, it became an overnight success, selling a million copies in six months. It is the second highest best seller next to the Bible.

On November 8, 1900 Eugene and Isabel Mitchell welcomed their daughter Margaret into the world. Both parents had deep Irish Catholic roots and valued education. Eugene was a lawyer and president of the Atlanta Historical Society. Isabel, known primarily as Maybelle, was a staunch women's suffragist. Margaret was instilled the value of education from early on. Her mother encouraged reading and offered to pay Margaret for every Shakespeare play she read. By the time she was eleven, Margaret had read them all. Other favorite authors included Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.

Margaret graduated from Washington Seminary, an elite finishing school for girls. She founded their drama club and edited the yearbook, Facts and Fancies. It published two of her stories. Her education at Smith College was cut short by her mother's death during the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.

After her mother's death, Margaret returned to Atlanta to become the new mistress of the house and prepared for the debutante season. At one ball she caused a scandal by performing a provocative dance that was popular in French clubs in those days. She often clashed with other debutantes, as she had become as outspoken as her mother regarding charitable causes.

In 1922 she began working as a journalist for the Atlanta Journal. She was paid twenty-five dollars for her weekly columns which appeared in the Sunday edition of the paper. Peggy, as she was known then, was one of the first female reporters in the South's leading papers. She interviewed celebrities like Rudolph Valentino and murderer Henry Thaw. She also wrote profiles of Civil War generals. Sixty-four of her considered best columns were compiled for Margaret Mitchell, Reporter which was released in 2000.

Also in 1922 Margaret married Red Upshaw. However, the marriage ended shortly thereafter, when she discovered her husband was a bootlegger. In 1925 she married the best man from her first wedding, John Marsh. It is rumored that Upshaw and Marsh courted her at the same time. She married Upshaw because he had been the first to propose to

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