Editing Margaret Mitchell (section)

===Writing ''Gone with the Wind''===
{{main|Gone with the Wind (novel)}}
{{Rquote|right|I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter. |Margaret Mitchell<ref>Brown, E.F., et al., ''Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: a bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood'', p. 9.</ref>}}
[[File:Margaret Mitchell - Democrat and Chronicle (1936).jpg|thumb|upright|Mitchell in 1936]]
In May 1926, after Mitchell had left her job at the ''Atlanta Journal'' and was recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for the ''Sunday Magazine'', "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to write until August.<ref name=reporter />{{rp|xv}} Meanwhile, her husband was growing weary of lugging armloads of books home from the library to keep his wife's mind occupied while she hobbled around the house; he emphatically suggested that she write her own book instead:
<blockquote>For God's sake, Peggy, can't you write a book instead of reading thousands of them?<ref name=Oliphant>Oliphant, Sgt. H. N. "People on the Home Front:  Margaret Mitchell". October 19, 1945. ''Yank'', p. 9.</ref></blockquote>

To aid her in her literary endeavors, John Marsh brought home a Remington Portable No. 3 [[typewriter]] (c. 1928).<ref name=autogenerated15 /><ref>[http://mytypewriter.com/margaretmitchell.aspx Remington Portable No. 3] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110921081504/http://mytypewriter.com/margaretmitchell.aspx |date=September 21, 2011 }}. Retrieved August 27, 2012.</ref>  For the next three years Mitchell worked exclusively on writing a Civil War-era novel whose heroine was named Pansy O'Hara (prior to ''[[Gone with the Wind (novel)|Gone with the Wind]]''{{'}}s publication Pansy was changed to Scarlett). She used parts of the manuscript to prop up a wobbly couch.<ref>Williamson, Joel. ''William Faulkner and Southern History''. New York:  Oxford University Press, 1993. p. 244-245. {{ISBN|0-19-507404-1}}</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 After Latham agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and rewriting the opening chapter several times.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>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/02/the-making-of-gone-with-the-wind-part-i/306455/|first=Gavin|last=Lambert|title=The Making of Gone With The Wind (Part I)|work=The Atlantic|date=February 1973|access-date=March 31, 2023|archive-date=June 5, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230605050323/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1973/02/the-making-of-gone-with-the-wind-part-i/306455/|url-status=live}}</ref> Mitchell and John Marsh edited the final version of the novel.<ref>{{cite book|first=Molly|last=Haskell|title=Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2010|page=140|isbn=978-0300164374}}</ref> ''Gone with the Wind'' was published in June 1936.