Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell

by Darden Asbury Pyron

Gone With the Wind is an American phenomenon. Arguably the most popular American novel of all time, it sold over a million copies in its first six months (in the heart of the Depression), won a Pulitzer Prize for its author, and more remarkable still, returned to the New York Times Best Seller list fifty years after its first appearance. Crowning its glory, David O. Selznick transformed the novel into one of the great films of all time, lifting its characters--especially the unforgettable Scarlett O'Hara and her lover-antagonist Rhett Butler--to the pinnacle of American popular culture. Now, in Southern Daughter, Darden Pyron provides an absorbing biography of Margaret Mitchell, the author of this American classic. In a solidly researched, sprightly narrative informed by a deep knowledge of Southern culture, Pyron reveals a woman of unconventional beauty, born into one of Atlanta's most prominent families, and imbued from childhood with tales of the Civil War. Mitchell was a rebellious child, an independent woman who wanted a career and not a family (children made her wince), and a Catholic who defiantly left the Church, divorced her first husband, Red Upshaw (a ne'er-do-well and sometime bootlegger), and married John Marsh (who had been Upshaw's best man). Fans of Gone With the Wind will find several chapters in Southern Daughter that trace how these elements in Mitchell's biography made their way into her fiction, including the most surprising identity for the fictional Rhett Butler. As a further surprise to most Americans who know only the film version of Gone With the Wind, Pyron reveals how Mitchell intended her book as a repudiation of the then popular "moonlight on the magnolias" genre of Civil War romance. Equally interesting is his portrait of Mitchell after the novel's success: the incredible flood of letters (in the 13 years before her death, Mitchell wrote at least ten thousand letters, an astonishing number of which ran pages and pages); the filming of Gone With the Wind, whose script ultimately required seventeen writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ben Hecht; and the lavish film premier in Atlanta. Whether describing Mitchell's earliest writing (such as The Cow Puncher and Phil Kelley, Detective, in which she played Zara the female crook), or discussing her final years, which were marred by constant pain and illness, wrangles with agents and publisher, and her increasing affection for litigation, this perceptive, sympathetic, and engagingly written biography illuminates the life of a major writer and the book she created, a work peopled with characters who still loom large in the American imagination.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Southern, War, Romance, Historical

676 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1991

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure what I enjoyed more - the beautiful, rich language or the thorough knowledge of the "insider" of Southern culture. My two cents:

- it would greatly help the reader if the book was prefaced by a long chapter on American South. Perhaps it should be written by the outsider. The author lived and breathed this culture for so long that he would sometimes use those little "shortcuts" to explain the local mores, attitudes, beliefs...One might argue that a Southerner would understand it all without saying much. A foreigner, or even someone from North East or Midwest - not immediately, and maybe not necessarily in the same vein.

- it would make the first chapter more readable to have a genealogical chart of both branches of Peggy Mitchell's family, and perhaps her husband's as well.
- Finally, I had a very unpleasant encounter (pg. 308 of 1991 edition) with the ghost of anti-Semitism, very much alive and kicking in 1930's. This letter was written to Margaret Mitchell by her friend and fellow Southerner Lois Cole who was at that time working at MacMillan and was trying to ease Peggy's worries regarding the contract with the publisher. Here it is in all its beauty:

"...may I take the liberty of pointing out that you are not dealing with a fifth rate Jewish publisher? If your contract had come from Greenberg or even A. A. Knopf, your suspicions, in fact all suspicions, might be easily understood. However, the contract came from us and it was the regular printed form which some twelve thousand Macmillan authors have signed without a qualm - In fact, I signed one myself."

Oh, the spirit of the times! Oh, the Old South!

How vital was it for the book to resurrect this anti-Semitic drivel? How important is Lois Cole's opinion? Let the reader decide.

[Laurie V · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointing. Darden Pyron's narrative is plodding, needlessly scholarly and full of obscure references that add nothing. It took a long time to finish this book because I kept falling asleep after reading two or three pages. Pyron did an amazing thing by taking a GWTW-related subject and making it so dull that even I struggled to get through it. However, I learned some interesting tidbits about Margaret Mitchell's original manuscript and her deal with David Selznick that saved the book from being a total bore. It's too bad the rest wasn't what I was hoping for. And what's with that pretentious picture of Pyron on the inside cover? Dude wishes he was John Malkovich.

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am giving up on this one, and that is something I don't usually do. My two star rating was generous. I wanted a biography of Margaret Mitchell. What I GOT was a psychological treatise on every aspect of her life. I felt like I was back in my college psych classes. I will give the author credit, the book is researched to the very last tittle and jot. But I just wanted a biography, not a college course.

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving this 2 stars because of the subject, Margaret Mitchell. If I rated it based on the writing alone, I would not be as generous.

I enjoyed the glimpses of Margaret Mitchell's humor revealed by her correspondence quoted throughout the book. I was also fascinated to discover that she was, for all intents and purposes, either a hypochondriac or at least a victim of illnesses brought on by her nerves and possibly by guilt at being less than the woman she thought her mother wanted her to be. I did not, however, enjoy the book as a whole.

The author managed to suck all the joy and life out of telling the story of a humorous, lively woman. He irritates with over-intellectual dissections of stories written by the adolescent Mitchell and a more than passing fancy for leading to overuse of the word "insouciant". Credulity was strained to the breaking point when he proceeded with a four page analysis of the psychology behind a story that now only exists in a former secretary's vague recollection of plot points. I can't help but think that Margaret Mitchell herself would happily smack him for being so tiresome.

[Sarah Bierle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This biography includes a lot of opinion from the author and too much psychoanalysis. The text doesn't always flow in a "timeline" order; it jumps around a lot which makes it challenging to know/remember that a lot of life events are happening simultaneously. Certainly, Mitchell was no saint, but this book seemed overly harsh in its approach.

Not my favorite biography of Margaret Mitchell, but worth reading for the research I'm doing on the author, her book, and the movie.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pyron's biography of Margaret Mitchell, while rather dry at times, presents a fascinating psychoanalytic interpretation of Mitchell's life, letters, and fiction. I especially enjoyed his analysis of the novel in comparison to the film version of GWTW. His insights into Mitchell's motivations are profound and allow the reader to understand Mitchell as a complicated woman with, at times, conflicting views but a vast understanding of humanity. This biography is also a fascinating read for anyone interested in Mitchell's family's history, especially Maybelle Mitchell. Pyron provides a wealth of information about the Mitchell family, revealing, in his opinion, the psychological impulses behind much of Margaret Mitchell's actions, desires, and even writing.

I felt a swell of admiration and immense sympathy for Margaret by the end. She truly suffered for about the last 15 years of her life, her art exacerbating her illness and pain more than any other force.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in researching Mitchell and seeking a thoughtful, thorough, and academic biography. Although Pyron employs a great deal of academic jargon, which I liked, and his writing, while poetic, does become dense at times, this is nevertheless an excellent book for any scholar.

[Cheryl Licata · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to learn everything about Margaret Mitchell's life before, during, and after writing Gone with the Wind, this is the book for you. I plowed through the 463 page biography, although I threatened to quit reading at various times, because there was too much repetition concerning Mitchell's relationship with her mother, problems with the novel and movie adaptation, and turmoil surrounding her entire life. However, there were many interesting tidbits like the fact that as the book was being written, the main character was named Pansy, and her name later changed to Scarlett; many readers suggested their favorite people to be cast into the movie including Eleanor Roosevelt, who wanted her maid to play Mammy; and Mitchell began writing GWTW in secret, and didn't tell anyone she gave the manuscript to an editor at MacMillan. Perhaps the biographer could have learned from Mitchell, made his book shorter, and left some of Margaret Mitchell's life private. My rating is actually a 2.5 -- halfway to a perfect 5.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a big Gone With the Wind fan, I had to read this bio of Margaret Mitchell. It gave me a much greater understanding of GWTW. It gets kind of tedious at times, but it's worth it if you want to learn all about Mitchell.

[ᝰ.ᐟ ⓅⒶⒾⓈⓁⒺⓎ ᝰ.ᐟ · Rating 5 out of 5]

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➕ Southern Daughter took me quite a while to read because it’s extremely dense and LONG. Which is the best kind of biography, really. Lucky for me I’m used to reading academic writing! It is EXTREMELY thorough, & I’m sure I’ll be rereading.

Not for the faint of heart, it’s an academic look at Margaret Mitchell as interpreted through deep analysis of Gone with the Wind, as well as her other writings, through a psychoanalytical lens.

I find Southern Daughter incredibly well-researched, well-argued, well-written, and unbiased. Pyron is a Southerner but he isn’t romantic about it. He writes with knowledge on the region and, though he seems to like Mitchell as well as her famous novel, he writes about her with candor, detailing the good and the bad in her character and laying it out frankly. I’d definitely reread Southern Daughter. I’d say, while a bit dense in places, it’s the finest biography I’ve read on Margaret Mitchell so far. I love the way it lays out so candidly the pressures that women were facing at the dawn of the new century. It’s sort of as if women were reconstructing themselves at the same time the South was. Maybe that’s why Mitchell identifies Scarlett so strongly with Atlanta.

[Lynne Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched yet thoroughly overwritten by an author who has talent and wants you to know it. As I've recently finished reading GWTW, I wanted to learn more about the author, how the book was written, and more about the author's views on race. A YT biography mentioned the author's financial support of many black medical students, yet this wasn't mentioned by the author (who was interviewed for the biography).

A hard edit would have made this a more satisfying read.

[Debi Steeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is very well written - I feel like I was able to know Margaret Mitchell!

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned it. I wanted to enjoy it but the pacing just did not engage me.

[Marti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Took me a long time to get through this.

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the fall of 1936, a million Americans had read Gone with the Wind although it had not been out much less than a year. Need I say more to demonstrate proof of one great American novel? David Selznick found that the public was so fiercely possessive of Gone with the Wind (think Twilight in today's lingo) that he had to tread very diplomatically over the casting trail. "Never in the moving picture business has there been such a deluge of letters on the casting of a picture, not even in advance of the casting of David Copperfield," wrote Selznick.

Margaret Mitchell spent her life writing, yet she is known only for this one novel. It is enough. Silly rumors spread about her, after the fact, that she had been nothing but a bored housewife. That is nonsense. She was a journalist in her younger years and suffered from debilitating health problems. It took her ten years to write Gone with the Wind after tremendous research and those ten years were partly chalked up due to her illnesses--and her husband's. Sadly, she was struck down by a car at the age of 49 (1949)and died of brain damage five days later. Disputes over ambiguous contracts with publishers and foreign rights arguments tormented her final years.)

There are many reasons to be attracted to this well written biography. Besides the fact that Gone with the Wind won a Pulitzer prize for its author and returned to the bestseller list 50 years later, besides the fact that it sold a million copies (in the middle of the Depression),Pyron unequivocally demonstrates that Margaret Mitchell was one of the most qualified people to ever write about the Old South, not just as a researcher but as a blueblood. Her family roots trace deep into Atlanta history. In fact, Pyron points out, Gone with the Wind reflects Mitchell's own life and ancestry. Yet she was a fiery, dynamic feminist: the new Southern belle leaping out of the hoary bosom of the Old South.

Darden Ashbury Pyron addresses the over forty year old mistake of biographers and critics in having ignored Mitchell's contribution to literature. See grassrootswritersguild at wordpress for more on Margaret Mitchell.

[┊ ♡ Cordelia ♡┊ · Rating 5 out of 5]

COMPLETED SEPTEMBER 2014. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

𝜗𝜚 This biography is 560 pages long and was first published in 1991. It’s the best biography I've read on Margaret Mitchell. However, it is extremely dense.

The writing style is SCHOLARLY. As in, a tad dense. I was able to read it because I read academic articles ALL DAY LONG while in school. However, if you’re looking for a light read, this one might be a bit much. Pyron is extremely detailed, and that in itself makes this both a dense & a satisfying read. So it’s all in what you want.

His focus is psychoanalysis of Mitchell’s writings from her youth — how they reflect her upbringing, her culture, and her personality.

He covers works she wrote long before Gone with the Wind in his analysis, which is why I so very much want to get into her collections of writing from high school & before (Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell.)

(WORST REVIEWER EVER. That's all I wrote.) *bows*

:¨ •.• ¨:
`• . ꔫ

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not expect a biography to be so compelling, but I honestly couldn't put this book down. The style is lively, and the content fascinating. It's a pretty thorough examination of Margaret Mitchell's childhood, adulthood, and the way her life changed with Gone With the Wind. The book is also thorough in describing the way Gone With the Wind took the nation by storm, while giving us an inside look at all that went into publishing the book and creating the movie.

[Jamie’s Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reviews of this book I’ve read are on the mark. This book was disappointing in that it’s not a straight up biography of Margaret Mitchell’s life. It was more of a psychoanalysis of Margaret Mitchell. I didn’t enjoy this book as much for that reason.

Update: Read “Road to Tara” by Anne Edwards for a better more in-depth look at the life of Margaret Mitchell.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at the life of Margaret Mitchell. Details about her childhood, family, writings and public and private life are revealed. I did not previously know about her political musings and found it extremely intriguing.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really insightful look into the culture that shaped the writing of and the nation's embrace of Mitchell's novel. Learning about the real life inspirations behind her characters was a real treat to me.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stellar, gossip- and innuendo-free, intelligent, scholarly telling of author Mitchell's life and creative development. Much more intelligent and better-annotated than previous biographies by Anne Edwards and the P.R. job masquerading as biography by Finis Farr.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the entire book for my 11th grade research paper, but I enjoyed every bit of it. Didn't like writing notecards though.

[Angelina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating woman that brought me one of my greatest joys in life!!

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfekt für meine Seminararbeit.
Zwar nicht das interessanteste Buch aber sehr Informativ. Es gibt tolle Einblicke in das Leben von Margaret Mitchell und die Entstehung von 'Gone with the Wind'.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of dry. sort of clinical.... Only so-so...;.

[Angie Fehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting bio tidbits here and there but the writing was way too dry for an entertaining read. Much more geared towards academic / textbook type reading.