Editing Margaret Mitchell (section)

===An avid reader===
An avid reader, young Margaret read "boys' stories" by [[G.A. Henty]], the [[Tom Swift]] series, and the [[Rover Boys]] series by [[Edward Stratemeyer]].<ref name=autogenerated41 /> Her mother read [[Mary Johnston]]'s novels to her before she could read. They both wept reading Johnston's ''The Long Roll'' (1911) and ''Cease Firing'' (1912).<ref>Gardner, Sarah E. ''Blood and Irony: Southern white women's narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937''. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. p. 241. {{ISBN|0-8078-2818-1}}</ref> Between the "scream of shells, the mighty onrush of charges, the grim and grisly aftermath of war", ''Cease Firing'' is a romance novel involving the courtship of a Confederate soldier and a Louisiana plantation belle<ref>Cooper, Frederic Tabor. "The Theory of Endings and Some Recent Novels." ''The Bookman'', November 1912, Vol. XXXVI: p. 439.</ref> with Civil War illustrations by [[N. C. Wyeth]]. She also read the plays of [[William Shakespeare]], and novels by [[Charles Dickens]] and [[Sir Walter Scott]].<ref name=autogenerated3>Champion, Laurie. ''American Women Writers, 1900–1945: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. p. 240. {{ISBN|0-313-30943-4}}</ref>  Mitchell's two favorite children's books were by author [[E. Nesbit|Edith Nesbit]]: ''[[Five Children and It]]'' (1902) and ''[[The Phoenix and the Carpet]]'' (1904). She kept both on her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts.<ref name=marsh/>{{rp|32}} Another author whom Mitchell read as a teenager and who had a major impact in her understanding of the Civil War and Reconstruction was [[Thomas Dixon Jr.|Thomas Dixon]].<ref name="Leiter 2004">{{cite web|last=Leiter|first=Andrew|title=Thomas Dixon, Jr.: Conflicts in History and Literature|publisher=Documenting the American South|date=2004|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html|access-date=July 21, 2017|archive-date=February 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170228142801/http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/dixon_intro.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Dixon's popular trilogy of novels ''[[The Leopard's Spots|The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden]]'' (1902), ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'' (1905) and ''[[The Traitor (Dixon novel)|The Traitor: A Story of the Rise and Fall of the Invisible Empire]]'' (1907) all depicted in vivid terms a white South victimized during the Reconstruction by Northern [[carpetbaggers]] and freed slaves, with an especial emphasis upon Reconstruction as a nightmarish time when black men ran amok, raping white women with impunity.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> As a teenager, Mitchell liked Dixon's books so much that she organized the local children to put on dramatizations of his books.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> The picture that white supremacist Dixon drew of Reconstruction is now rejected as inaccurate, but at the time, the memory of the past was such that it was widely believed by white Americans.<ref name="Leiter 2004"/> In a letter to Dixon dated August 10, 1936, Mitchell wrote: "I was practically raised on your books, and love them very much."<ref name="Leiter 2004"/>