MITCHELL (Margaret Munnerlyn, 1900-1949, American Novelist and Journalist, Author of ‘Gone with the Wind’)

Extraordinarily long Autograph Letter Signed ‘Margaret’ to Edwin GRANBERRY (1897-1988, American Writer, Novelist and Translator) on a variety of subjects starting by telling him that her husband had “gone North for an advertising convention and I decided to come home because we never like to have both of us out of town at the same time when Father’s health is so precarious... Time and again I sat down to write to you but I have been so rushed and weary of spirit that I did not wish to inflict a dull letter upon you. When one member of a famiyl is seriously ill over a long period the world contracts for the rest... so my life during the last year has been spent between hospital, Red Cross and home... I went to Smith for my college reunion and for visits with friends in Boston and New York. It did me a world of good, only it ‘onsettled me in my mind’ and made me yearn to go on visiting and traveling... But I just can’t get away... Father seems so much weaker... When we have company, we put them up at the Biltmore, which is the closest hotel to us... I wish you would think over this invitation and understand that when you stay at the Biltmore you are our guests... I wondered how you were doing... I wanted to know about the play. I never did know whether you finished it... and try it out on the Lunts. On of their good friends, a well known author, told me recently that the Lunts had a never-ending problem of finding the right kind of play. I have always felt that your play would be marvelous for them... the tone of the play was so right, as it dealt with the completely normal emotions of adults. In these days, there are not too many books or plays about middle aged men and women with almost grown children. The few I know about deal somewhat unhealthily with rather devious minds, whereas you are able to portray mature emotions, frankly passionate, if one must come out flatfootedly and frankly clean... I never like to put my oar in on someone else’s business, so, if the following suggestion does not appeal to you, just say no and no harm will be done. I do not claim to know the Lunts intimately. I have seen them perhaps four times and they have had dinner with us... if you’d like me to write them about the play and ask them if they’d like to see it, I’d be happy indeed to do this... I wish it were possible for you to have a year off in which to work at the job you are really fitted for. When I was in New York, I saw my friend Lois Cole, at the Macmillan Company. She had the only news of Herschel any of us have had since he went to Columbia, South America. Several months ago she had a letter... asking her to send him a number of books which were collections of American short stories. He wishes to select from all the volumes enough short stories to make one volume and translate them into Spanish - perhaps like the O’Brien or O’Henry collections... I had dinner with the Dowdeys in New York and they asked if I had seen you and lamented that Clifford was having such a time with his eyes... Clifford is desperately trying to get into the army, bad eyes or no, but he is half through a novel and feels that he should finish it before enlisting. He told me that Kenneth Littauer had been in the air force for a number of months and was now at some field in Mississippi. He is, of course, over age for flying, so I suppose he is doing ground service... Marjorie Rawlings and Norton Baskin were here a month or so ago. Marjorie was speaking as one of a series of lectures, for the benefit of the Red Cross. Vincent Sheean was another speaker. We had the Baskins and Sheean for a quite supper in between a cocktail party and Mr Sheean’s lecture. The brief meeting showed him an attractive and interesting person. He’s now in the army... you’d find him entertaining. People in New York and Boston have at last gotten the idea that we are in a war. Both cities are dim and are crowded with uniforms of every service. It’s queer to see Australian airmen on the streets and soldiers in Dutch and Norwegian uniforms, and I saw uniforms belonging to God know what country. I am sure entire crews of German submarines could parade on Fifth Avenue and no one would pay them any mind, and they would doubtless think them part of the Coast Guard... In connection with Civilian Defense, let me present to you Mr and Mrs John R. Marsh, respectively Sector Warden and Deputy Sector Warden. John has five blocks under his care, and it would be just my luck to have an air raid tonight when he is out of town and I am in charge. It is incredible how much time and paper work is involved in Civilian Defence, and how much confusion and worry... Just about the time you get a warden broken in, the army snatches him off..I think we will end up by having Civilian Defence completely operated by women...” and ends by repeating her invitation for them to visit, 3 sides 4to., Margaret Mitchell headed paper, Atlanta, Georgia, 24th June

Mitchell wrote only one novel, published during her lifetime, the American Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind, for which she won the National Book Award for Fiction for Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Long after her death, a collection of Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, titled Lost Laysen, were published. A collection of newspaper articles written by Mitchell for The Atlanta Journal was republished in book form. Mitchell was struck and killed by a speeding drunk driver in 1949.
Granberry became an English professor at Rollins College in 1933. Granberry was a reviewer (for The New York Sun) of Gone with the Wind, which he compared favourably to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Later, Granberry and his wife, Mabel, became friends with Mitchell. In 1932, Granberry won the O. Henry Award for Best Short Short Story.
Alfred LUNT (1892-1977) was an American actor and director, best known for his long stage partnership with his wife, Lynn FONTANNE (1887-1983), from the 1920s to 1960, co-starring in Broadway and West End productions. Col. Kenneth Proctor LITTAUER (1894-1968) served as senior intelligence officer with the 8th Air Force in England and helped to plan the D-Day bombings. Clfford DOWDEY (1904-1979) was an American writer of fiction and nonfiction dealing with the American South, Virginia and especially the Civil War era. Herschell BRICKELL ((1889-1952)was a columnist and editor and US State Department official in Colombia. Norton BASKIN (1901-1997) was an American Actor and his wife Marjorie Kinnan RAWLINGS (1896-1953) was an American writer who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939. Vincent SHEEAN (1899-1975) was an American journalist and novelist. John R. Marsh was Mitchell’s second husband.
Provenance: From the Estate of Edwin Granberry.

Item Date:  1942

Stock No:  42459      £1750

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