Tomorrow is Another Day

Today's History Lesson...a Pulitzer Prize

Only a few days ago, Today's History Lesson focused on June 27, 1939 when one of the most famous scenes in movie history was filmed. This scene contained a curse word, 'damn', which miraculously, considering the times, passed the firm censors. It was only three years earlier almost to the day when the story that inspired the film is published...finally.

This Day in History: June 30, 1936

MITCHELL, Margaret. Gone with the Wind.
New York: Macmillan, 1936.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell was rejected by 38 publishers before making it to the printing presses. The book won Mitchell the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Even with such acclamation it has been dubbed offensive and vulgar by some even to the point of being banned. The scandalous language with bold characterizations met disapproval yet went on to become a bestselling literary classic and blockbuster movie.

Gone with the Wind was popular with American readers from the outset and was the top American fiction bestseller in the year it was published and in 1937. As of 2014, a Harris poll found it to be the second favorite book of American readers, just behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide.

In her own words, Margaret Mitchell wrote...

If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't."

NOTE:  There are many "first" types of books out there but ... a true, true first edition of "Gone With the Wind" was published in May of 1936 by The Macmillan Company. Many people are not aware that only 10,000 copies of the true first were printed. 

• The heroine of Gone With the Wind did not start out with the name Scarlet: It was an Atlanta belle named Pansy O'Hara.
• Mrs. Mitchell wrote the novel on a Remington manual typewriter.
• Margaret Mitchell died 10 years later after she was struck by a speeding car while crossing Atlanta's Peachtree Street.
• Scarlett, a relatively unmemorable sequel to Gone With the Wind, written by Alexandra Ripley, was published in 1992.

A Lesson Learned...

To all writers who have, or possibly will, receive rejections, take a lesson from some of the greatest writers of all time. Publishers sometimes just get it wrong...miss the point, thus, lose out all the way around. A rejection should not mean giving up but instead moving on. Just as Scarlett O'Hara faced a life without Rhett Butler, tomorrow is another day!

In other words, Give Up Giving Up!