Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was an American novelist born in 1900 in Atlanta, USA. With her only novel, *Gone with the Wind*, she achieved a fame unmatched by any other novelist before her. She began her career in 1921 as a reporter for an Atlanta newspaper. In 1925, she married the editor and retired from journalism. Mitchell grew up among relatives who had witnessed firsthand the events of the American Civil War. After a failed marriage, she began to support herself by writing for a local newspaper in Atlanta. She retired from journalism in the mid-twenties and devoted herself to writing. Her famous novel, Gone with the Wind, was completed over a period of 10 years. Mitchell turned down numerous lucrative offers to write a sequel, but in 1980, her grandchildren granted author Alexandra Ripley permission to write the sequel. It was published in 1991 and adapted into a television series, but neither the book nor the television adaptation were met with widespread acclaim from readers and viewers.