Grave of Margaret Mitchell Author of Gone With The Wind
N 33° 44.916 W 084° 22.454
16S E 743228 N 3737379
Grave located at Historic Oakland Cemetery in
Atlanta, Ga.
Waymark Code: WMA59
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 04/09/2006
Views: 123
N33 44.916 W084 22.454
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell
Birth: Nov. 8, 1900
Atlanta
Georgia, USA
Death: Aug. 16, 1949
Author. Well known as the author of "Gone with the Wind," she began working as a journalist, using the name of Peggy Mitchell for the Atlanta Journal as a feature writer. That same year, she married Berrien Kinnard Upshaw. The marriage lasted only a few months, but the couple was not officially divorced until 1924. In 1925, Mitchell married John Marsh, and shocked Atlanta society by keeping her own name, "Margaret Mitchell" for professional purposes. (In private life, she was known as Peggy Marsh.) It took her ten years to write "Gone With The Wind," then titled "Tomorrow is Another Day." She also changed the name of the heroine, the beautiful and manipulative Southern belle, from her original choice of "Pansy" to the more evocative "Scarlett". In addition to its staggering sales, the novel won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1937. Just one month after the release of the book, the film rights were sold to David O. Selznick for the then highest paid fee ever - $50,000. Margaret Mitchell wanted no part in the movie, and had a clause written in to her contract absolving her from any more work on the project. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best picture for the 1939, arguably one of the greatest years for film. Apart from a lively correspondence, she personally answered a good deal of her millions of fan letters. She never wrote again. On Aug. 11, 1949, while crossing the intersection of Peachtree and 13th which is only three blocks from "The Dump", Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding taxi (it is rumored that he was drunk at the time). She and her husband were on their way to see a movie. She died five days later. As of 1998, "Gone With the Wind" was the best-selling book of all time, after the Bible, with a total of 23 million copies sold worldwide. In 1996, figures indicated that almost 200 million people had seen the Selznick film version of book; a gala re-release of a remastered version in 1998 undoubtedly pushed those numbers even higher.
Burial:
Oakland Cemetery
Atlanta
Fulton County
Georgia, USA
Margaret Mitchell
GRAVE
Photo of GPS at grave in gallery.