MARGARET MITCHELL - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 03/24/1941 - HFSID 55657

MARGARET MITCHELL
Letter to friends about family illnesses: "It seems to me that the Granberrys have suffered all the plagues of Egypt."
Typed Letter signed: "Margaret", 1p, 7¼x10½. Atlanta, Georgia, 1941 March 24. On personal letterhead to Mabel and Edwin (Granberry). In full: "I've just had a note from Susan Myrick. She apologised for not telling me sooner that she had been in Orlando and learned that illness was besetting the Granberrys. She wrote that several of you had flu and pneumonia or flu or pneumonia and were ill enough to have trained nurses. After the strain you underwent with Edwin Junior, I can easily understand that you were a fertile field for any kind of germs. If one of you is able to write, please let us know how you all are and how many of you were ill. It seems to me that the Granberrys have suffered all the plagues of Egypt and surely something very fine must be in store for you to make up for the bad things you have undergone. Sue wrote, briefly, that you, Edwin, had gone to New York or were going to New York about the play. Please tell us about that, too. I am trying to get off to Washington for the Washington newspaper woman's annual banquet. You'd think from the stewing that goes on around here whenever I try to get away for even a week-end that each trip was made by covered wagon across the continent. Tell me about Edwin Junior's eyes, too, when you write. And my love to each and every one of you." MARGARET MITCHELL MARSH (1900-1949), a native of Atlanta, Georgia, was awarded the 1937 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for Gone With the Wind, her epic novel set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and Reconstruction South. At first uncertain about her book's literary merit, she had submitted her manuscript to Macmillan Company in 1935. Mitchell was stunned -- and thrust into the public spotlight -- when the book sold over 1.3 million copies in its first year. It remained on the best-seller list for 21 weeks, enjoying a resurgence in sales with the release of the 1939 film based on the novel. EDWIN GRANBERRY, a freelance book reviewer and critic, had reviewed her book in a glowing and unprecedented 1,200-word piece in the New York "Evening Sun" on June 30, 1936, the day of the book's publication. Mitchell had been so impressed by the report, which compared her book to Tolstoy's War and Peace, that she had written to thank him. Her letter started a lifelong correspondence -- and a friendship between the two couples: Margaret and her husband, JOHN MARSH, and Edwin (a Southerner himself) and his wife, MABEL. Margaret and John first met the Granberrys at Blowing Rock, North Carolina, the summer campus of Florida's Rollins College, where Granberry was a Professor of English. It was during this visit that she had agreed to accept $50,000 in movie rights for her book pending contract negotiations with producer David O. Selznick (against Granberry's advice). Besides their visits to Blowing Rock, the Marshes often vacationed with the Granberrys at their home in Winter Park, Florida. SUSAN MYRICK, a close friend of Mitchell's, was a technical advisor for the filming of Gone with the Wind and wrote a book, White Columns, about the making of the movie.Lightly foxed. Otherwise, fine condition.