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MITCHELL, Margaret (1900-1949). Typed letter signed ("Margaret") to the book reviewer and critic Herschel Brickell, Atlanta, 22 August 1936. 2 pages, small folio, single-spaced, on her stationery with name embossed in blue at top of each sheet, dictated to her husband John who has added his signed autograph postscript, usual folds.
"HOW THE LEGEND ABOUT...[THE] DISCOVERY OF 'GONE WITH THE WIND' DOES GROW AND CHANGE!"
"...A Further Range [Robert Frost's new book] arrived, and I thank you for it. When I can read, it will be the first thing I do read. Thank you, too, for the Review of Reviews article and the Publisher's Weekly one [all regarding Gone With the Wind, published that May]. I was very excited over the R. of R., even as I was at your first review -- and to think that you wrote this one before your critical faculties were dulled by my charms! ... I am enclosing ... the clipping from the Hickory, N.C. paper. Please send it back. How the legend about Mr. [H.S.] Latham's discovery of Gone With the Wind does grow and change! [He was the Macmillan vice-president who 'discovered' her manuscript in 1935.] ... You are out of your head when you talk about the book selling a million. I am at present too addled to think of anything to bet you on this -- but I will think of something [Gone With the Wind became a literary phenomenon, selling two million copies by 1939] ... Thank you for the rest of Mrs. [Marjorie Kinnan] Rawlings' letter. It is about the most wonderful thing anybody has said about the book, and her perceptions are exceptionally penetrating when she writes about the last chapter..."
Herschel Brickell, a fellow Southener (from Mississippi), was a noted book reviewer of his day (mid-1920s on), a one-time editor at the publishing firm Henry Holt; he is mentioned in biographies of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, and Hemingway. In the late 1920s he served on the New York Herald Tribune book section; at the time of this correspondence he was a reviewer for the New York Evening Post.
"HOW THE LEGEND ABOUT...[THE] DISCOVERY OF 'GONE WITH THE WIND' DOES GROW AND CHANGE!"
"...A Further Range [Robert Frost's new book] arrived, and I thank you for it. When I can read, it will be the first thing I do read. Thank you, too, for the Review of Reviews article and the Publisher's Weekly one [all regarding Gone With the Wind, published that May]. I was very excited over the R. of R., even as I was at your first review -- and to think that you wrote this one before your critical faculties were dulled by my charms! ... I am enclosing ... the clipping from the Hickory, N.C. paper. Please send it back. How the legend about Mr. [H.S.] Latham's discovery of Gone With the Wind does grow and change! [He was the Macmillan vice-president who 'discovered' her manuscript in 1935.] ... You are out of your head when you talk about the book selling a million. I am at present too addled to think of anything to bet you on this -- but I will think of something [Gone With the Wind became a literary phenomenon, selling two million copies by 1939] ... Thank you for the rest of Mrs. [Marjorie Kinnan] Rawlings' letter. It is about the most wonderful thing anybody has said about the book, and her perceptions are exceptionally penetrating when she writes about the last chapter..."
Herschel Brickell, a fellow Southener (from Mississippi), was a noted book reviewer of his day (mid-1920s on), a one-time editor at the publishing firm Henry Holt; he is mentioned in biographies of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Frost, and Hemingway. In the late 1920s he served on the New York Herald Tribune book section; at the time of this correspondence he was a reviewer for the New York Evening Post.