Gone With the Wind.

MITCHELL, Margaret.

$18,500.00

Item Number: 136276

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936.

First edition of Margaret Mitchell’s masterpiece which remains one of the fastest selling novels in the history of American publishing, with 50,000 copies sold in a single day. Octavo, original cloth. First printing, with “Published May 1936” on the copyright page and no mention of other printings. Association copy, signed by eleven members of David O. Selznick’s epic American 1939 film adaptation on the front pastedown and front free endpaper with nine adding the names of the characters they portrayed, “Evelyn Keyes, ‘Suellen’ [O’Hara],” “Mickey Kuhn, ‘Beau [Wilkes] age 7 years,'” “Marcella Martin [Cathleen Calvert],” “Ann Rutherford, ‘Careen’ [O’Hara],'” Rand Brooks [Charles Hamilton],” “William Bakewell, ‘A Mounted Officer'”, “Greg Griese, ‘Baby Beau & Baby Bonnie'”, “Fred Crane, ‘Brent Tarleton'”, “Patrick Curtis ‘Baby Beau'”, “Frank (Junior) Coghlan, The collapsing Southern soldier,” and “Cammie King ‘Bonnie Blue [Butler]'”. The signatures were obtained by Mr. Tatnall Brown on the occasion of the film’s March 10, 1961 gala “Anniversary Premiere” at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta commemorating the centennial of the start of the Civil War as well as marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book. The Loew’s Grand was the venue famous for the original December 19, 1939 world premiere. Very good in a very good completely unrestored first issue dust jacket with Gone with the Wind listed in second column of booklist on back panel and the $3.00 cost on front flap. Eicher 730. With Brown’s bookplate to the pastedown. Laid in is a small stiff paper card with an image of Gone With the Wind; signed by Margaret Mitchell, “Thank you for your letter. See 2 and 3 Margaret Mitchell Marsh.” Additionally laid in is a post card with a portrait of Vivien Leigh from The Selznick Studio signed by her, an original program from the film, and a small booklet, “Margaret Mitchell and Her Novel Gone With the Wind” [New York: Macmillan, 1936]. Housed in a custom clamshell box. A unique example.

“Mitchell’s sweeping rendition of a South torn apart by civil war… has become national mythology” (New York Public Library’s Books of the Century, 111). “This is beyond doubt one of the most remarkable first novels produced by an American writer. It is also one of the best… It has been a long while since the American public has been offered such a bounteous feast of excellent story-telling” (New York Times Book Review, 1936). Said to be the fastest selling novel in the history of American publishing (50,000 copies in a single day), Gone with the Wind won Mitchell the Pulitzer Prize.