17. Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell was very much a daughter of the old South, a descendant of families both slave-holding and Confederate war veterans. She was raised in a socially prominent and affluent manner. Her family moved from the Jackson Hill neighborhood of Atlanta to a location on the outskirts of town following the Atlanta Race Riots in 1906, an event she remembered for the rest of her life. Schooled in the Lost Cause classrooms in Atlanta, she heard tales of the Old South from veterans of the war, both military and from the home front. As a teenager she became a lifelong fan of the works of Thomas Dixon Jr. Following the publication of Gone with the Wind in 1936, she wrote Dixon, “I was practically raised on your books…”
Mitchell created, in her novel published in 1936, a literary picture of the South of the Lost Cause. Her vision of the gallant and chivalrous knights of the South, the lovely plantations, the Southern Belles, and the happy and loyal slaves resonated with readers across the country. Her work won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and remained on the best seller lists for years. By 2014, over 30 million copies of the book had been sold. It revealed the vision of the South and its history as it was taught in Southern schools during the heyday of the Lost Cause movement, of a noble and chivalrous nation brought to destruction by an implacable and powerful enemy to the Southern way of life.