For the UALR English Department, this is J. Bradley Minnick with Facts About Fiction.
Margaret Mitchell, born in 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, wrote only one novel. She began work on the novel to relieve her boredom of being cooped up at home with a broken ankle but kept the novel a secret from friends, covering the manuscript with a towel when entertaining.
Here are the facts: In April 1935, Harold Latham, an editor for the Macmillan publishing company toured the South looking for new talent. It was only after hearing a friend comment that she wasn't serious enough to have written a book that she gathered up her 70 chapters and brought them to Latham at his hotel. He subsequently read part of it on a train to New Orleans and had it sent straight away to New York. By July, Mitchell had a contract, a $500 advance and had secured ten percent of the royalties for Gone With the Wind.
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