Margaret Mitchell's Final 'Gone With the Wind' Typescript Chapters Not Gone, After All
Conclusion of Margaret Mitchell's typescript, thought destroyed, rediscovered.
March 30, 2011 — -- Toward the end of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind," Scarlett O'Hara says, "After all, tomorrow is another day" -- and it turns out there will be another day for Mitchell's final typescript of the novel's last four chapters.
In fact, the document, long thought to have been destroyed, will be on display at the Pequot Library in Southport, Conn., starting this Saturday, April 2.
The manuscript, perhaps one of the most precious literary artifacts in America, was found by chance after author Ellen F. Brown, who was working on "Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With the Wind': A Bestseller's Odyssey From Atlanta to Hollywood," (published in February) sent the library a research request for the foreign editions of the book.
Brown reminded staff members at Pequot Library that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the novel's publication, and the library decided to put on an exhibit.
"It was in that process of trying to figure out what to put in the exhibit that I found the manuscript," said Dan Snydacker, executive director of the Pequot Library.
"This is a tremendous surprise because the story has always been that the pages were destroyed," Brown told ABC News.
The library had the manuscript authenticated by Chris Coover, a senior specialist in manuscripts and books at Christie's auction house in New York. Coover is a Margaret Mitchell expert who has handled artifacts such as letters from Mitchell. He realized the handwriting on the pages belonged to Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh.
Marsh was said to be so overcome with grief after his wife's tragic death that he destroyed the "Gone With the Wind" manuscript and kept some chapters for himself.
Those other surviving chapters now are kept in Atlanta as property of the Margaret Mitchell Estate and held securely in a bank vault where only the estate's attorney can have access.
However, the last four chapters evidently were in the hands of George Brett Jr., the president of Macmillan, Mitchell's publisher. He also happened to be president of Pequot Library in the 1950s.
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