MARGARET MITCHELL - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 12/20/1940 - HFSID 55653

MARGARET MITCHELL
Bound for vacation, the author plans to drive slowly through South Georgia and North Florida "where the cattle pasture on the roads by day and sleep there at night."
Typed Letter signed: "Margaret", 1p, 7¼x10½. Atlanta, Georgia, 1940 December 20. On personal letterhead to Mabel and Edwin (Granberry). In full: "We have decided to stay here through Christmas, as the end-of-the-year business is pushing us and we feel, too, that Father would like us to be here that day. We expect to leave for Florida on the 26th and hope to arrive in Orlando on the night of the 28th. However, do not kill any chickens for us that night, as we may not arrive until the next morning, the 29th. I won't drive fast on South Georgia and North Florida roads where the cattle pasture on the roads by day and sleep there at night. A few more people were killed by cows in South Georgia last week, so I intend to drive slowly. We expect to stay at the Colonial Orange Court (or Terrace) in Orlando, where we stayed last time, and we will phone you when we get there. We have a vague memory that you did not have a telephone at that time. If you are still smart enough not to have a telephone, then we will just drive over to your house after we have checked into the hotel. If you have any plans for the night of the 28th or the morning of the 29th please go on with them. If we arrive at your house and find no one there, we will leave a note under the door. While we both want to see you as soon as possible, we feel, for Edwin's sake, that the longer we put off the trip the better it will be for the play. By arriving around the 28th he will have extra days in which to work, and if he hasn't finished by the time we get there you, Mabel, and John and I can take ourselves off somewhere and let him work. We are so terribly pleased with the prospect of seeing you. It doesn't seem possible that it is really coming to pass and I won't believe it till we are there. We are all bottled up with yards and yards of conversation which we are anxious to swap for yards of your conversation. Love to you both, [signature] P.S. I know we will probably have to see newspapers and call on some people we know in your section, but we want to see you two first if we can."  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. Slightly creased and foxed. Otherwise, fine condition.