Editing Gone with the Wind (novel) (section)

==Biographical background and publication==
Born in 1900 in [[Atlanta]], Margaret (Peggy) Mitchell was a Southerner and writer throughout her life. She grew up hearing stories about the American Civil War and the Reconstruction from her Irish-American grandmother, [[Annie Fitzgerald Stephens]], who had endured its suffering while living on the family plantation, [[Rural Home]]. Her forceful and intellectual mother, [[Maybelle Stephens Mitchell]], was a [[suffragist]] who fought for the rights of women to vote.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell|last=Edwards|first=Anne|publisher=Ticknor & Fields|year=1983|isbn=9780899191690|location=New Haven, Connecticut|pages=17–18}}</ref><!--Father and grandfathers? -->

As a young woman, Mitchell found love with an army lieutenant. He was killed in World War I, and she would carry his memory for the remainder of her life. After studying at Smith College for a year, during which time her mother died from the [[Spanish flu|1918 pandemic flu]], Mitchell returned to Atlanta. She married, but her husband was an abusive bootlegger. She took a job writing feature articles for the ''Atlanta Journal'' at a time when Atlanta debutantes of her class did not work. After divorcing her first husband, she married again to a man who shared her interest in writing and literature, John Marsh. He had been the best man at her first wedding.<ref>{{cite web |title=Biography of Margaret Mitchell |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/margaret-mitchell-american-rebel-biography-of-margaret-mitchell/2043/ |website=American Masters |date=March 29, 2012 |publisher=PBS |access-date=September 29, 2020}}</ref>

Margaret Mitchell began writing ''Gone with the Wind'' in 1926 to pass the time while recovering from a slow-healing injury from an auto crash.<ref name=autogenerated63>[http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/pdf/GWTW.pdf "People on the Home Front: Margaret Mitchell"], Sgt. H. N. Oliphant, ''Yank'', (October 19, 1945), p. 9. Retrieved May 12, 2011.</ref> In April 1935, [[Harold Latham]] of Macmillan, an editor looking for new fiction, read her manuscript and saw that it could be a best-seller. After Latham agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and rewriting the opening chapter several times.<ref name=autogenerated89>[https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/73feb/gone.htm Gavin Lambert, "The Making of Gone With the Wind"], ''Atlantic Monthly'', (February 1973). Retrieved May 14, 2011.</ref> Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, a copy editor by trade, edited the final version of the novel. Mitchell wrote the book's final moments first and then wrote the events that led to them.<ref name=autogenerated65>Joseph M. Flora, Lucinda H. MacKethan, Todd Taylor (2002), ''The Companion to Southern Literature: themes, genres, places, people, movements and motifs'', Louisiana State University Press, p. 308. {{ISBN|0-8071-2692-6}}</ref> ''Gone with the Wind'' was published in June 1936.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://login.ezproxy.auctr.edu:2050/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=17285442&site=lrc-live|title=Gone with the Wind|website=Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature|publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica}}</ref>