Click to close [X]

Click image to enlarge

As yet the moving picture producers have not announced what actors and actresses will play Rhett and Scarlett. The public, however, believes that Clark Gable will be cast as Rhett…

MITCHELL, MARGARET. (1900-1949). American author of the popular novel Gone with the Wind. TLS. (“Margaret Mitchell Marsh”). 2pp. 4to. Atlanta, December 27, 1937. Written on her personal stationery to Danish illustrator Axel Mathiesen (1882-1973).

Your original illustrations arrived on Christmas Eve, and they gave more pleasure than I can express to you on paper. How very kind you were to send them! I was happy enough to have copies, and I am overwhelmed at having the originals. I shall frame them with great care and hang them on the wall of my living room above the divan, where all my visitors can see and admire them. I am sure if I had been the artist I could never have been as generous. Some time ago Mr. Hasselbalch wrote me, asking if there was any chance of your illustrations being included in some future low-priced American edition of Gone With the Wind. I replied to him that my publisher did not know when, if ever, a cheap edition would be published. Gone With the Windis still enjoying a remarkable sale at the original price and, naturally, my publishers, The Macmillan Company, see no reason why a cheap edition should be published. I told Mr. Hasselbalch that my American publishers had seen the Danish edition with your illustrations, for I had presented copies to Mr. George P. Brett, Junior, the president, and Mr. Harold Latham, the vice president. They were both charmed with your pictures. Furthermore, I told Mr. Hasselbalch that I thought it would be well for him, as my Danish publisher, to communicate directly with Mr. Brett, my American publisher, about the matter of using your illustrations in some future edition. I have gone into details of my correspondence with Mr. Hasselbalch so that you will understand the enclosed carbon copy of a letter I have written Mr. Hasselbalch today about the advisability of your taking out an American copyright on your drawings. I would not have you think that the people of the United States are more dishonest than the people of other nations; I only know that there are unscrupulous people in every nation, and I should not like for anything unpleasant to happen to your pictures. I sent copies of your illustrations to Mr. Selznick, the head of the moving picture firm which will film Gone With the Windand I had from him a complimentary and enthusiastic letter. I learn with some interest that the film of Gone With the Wind, which has been delayed for a year now, will probably be begun on February 1^st. I have no connection with the picture and am not responsible for anything in it, but, of course, I am interested. As yet the moving picture producers have not announced what actors and actresses will play Rhett and Scarlett. The public, however, believes that Clark Gable will be cast as Rhett…

After writing for the Atlanta Journal, Mitchell began work on Gone With the Wind, which occupied her for ten years. Her epic story of the American Civil War and Reconstruction was an incomplete manuscript when Mitchell handed it over to Macmillan editor Harold Latham. Mitchell’s friend had asked her to show Latham around Atlanta during his search for new Southern writers. On an impulse, Mitchell gave him her manuscript and he immediately recognized its potential popularity. George Platt Brett, Jr.(1893-1984), president of Macmillan Publishing, secured the publishing rights to Gone With the Wind and itsold one million copies in the first six months after its publication in 1936, at the time, the biggest selling novel in the history of U.S. publishing.

Soon after its success in the United States, the novel was published in Norway and Sweden. Denmark became the third country to acquire foreign language rights when Copenhagen publisher Steen Hasselbalch (1881-1952) released the work in Danish. “Published initially in the fall of 1937, the first Danish edition numbered 10,000 copies; it sold out in eleven days and went into a second printing immediately. In a country of fewer than one million, the publisher anticipated eventual sales of 40,000 copies. Mitchell quoted her Danish publisher with mingled pleasure and incredulity. No book had sold anything near these figures before in Denmark. ‘We are glad to note daily that its title also in Danish “Borte med Blaeston” has been used everywhere for every possible occasion even in our churches,’” (Southern Daughter, Pyron).

Shortly after the book’s release, Hollywood producer David O. Selznick (1902-1965) bought the film rights, paying the record sum of $50,000. Casting the female lead was a lengthy process and involved many screen stars including Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford, before English actress Vivian Leigh was cast to star opposite Clark Gable. Selznick’s Gone With the Wind premieredin Atlanta on December 15, 1939, with Mitchell in the audience. It enjoyed extraordinary success, winning eight Oscars. The movie served to increase the book’s popularity, and pirated foreign copies, with which Mitchell wryly filled her bookcases, abounded. Herlater years were dominated by financial worries and, accordingly, she tried to keep close track of foreign royalties. By the time of her death, in 1949, sales of Gone with the Wind had reached 8,000,000.

Mathiesen worked as a commercial artist as well as an illustrator of children’s books. Among other authors whose works he illustrated in Denmark were Edgar Rice Burroughs, Captain Frederick Marryat, Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, and Agatha Christie.

Folded with normal wear and very light age toning at the edges. In very good condition.  Accompanied by its original envelope and a carbon of her letter to Hasselbalch.

Item #17062

Price: $4,000