LETTERS OF NOTE: Margaret Mitchell's Mother

Following on from yesterday's post about two highly-regarded authors, today's Letter of Note deals with another: Margaret Mitchell, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for Gone with the Wind.

In January 1919, Mitchell was in her first year of study at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She entertained becoming an psychiatrist, but those aspirations were blown apart by the death of her mother, a victim of the flu pandemic that began sweeping the world the previous year. On January 22nd she received a letter from her father ordering her home, but by the time she got there her mother had already succumbed to pneumonia.

Mitchell's father presented her with a letter from her, written on January 23rd, which you can read in its entirety here. It's hard to say how much influence this event had on Mitchell's writing, but the letter itself is very moving. If you're in need of more Mitchell afterwards, you can read my review of Gone with the Wind here or check out my WhatCulture! article on it here.

Daniel