Details
MITCHELL, Margaret. Typed letter signed ("Margaret") to Herschel Brickell, Atlanta, 8 December 1936. 2 pages, small folio, single-spaced, on her stationery with name embossed in blue at top of each sheet., with several holograph corrections by Mitchell in pencil and ink, usual folds, with stamped, addressed envelope.
"I WISH TO GOD I'D CHOKED BEFORE I EVER WROTE ANY BOOK"
"...In my files I have over a thousand requests for autograph books ... I can't fill them all and so I've had to refuse them all ... The requests about pages of manuscript [of Gone With the Wind] are about the same. All the Universities have been after me for all the manuscript or a part of it or a page of it; relatives, friends, collectors, etc. have come down on me about the same thing. So I've refused them all... Moreover, I want my manuscript and do not want it floating around for I intend to burn it just as soon as I get those leaves back which MacM Co. [her publisher Macmillan] inveigled out of me when I was too exhausted to argue. I haven't written any letters about my work in spite of about a million requests. First reason -- because I don't want any letters about my work floating around. Second reason, I don't know how I work, haven't the slightest idea how I work and so couldn't write much of a letter. The proof sheets are going to be burned, too, just as soon as I get them back. I don't want anyone to see them just as I did not want anyone to see the ms. pages but couldn't help myself. Don't ask why. I don't know. I suppose it is the same passion for privacy and resentment of strangers' prying that has made my life a Hell during the last few months..." For most of the remaining half of the letter Mitchell does a favor at the request of the author Minnie Hite Moody ("who wrote Death is a Little Man, a negro story laid in Atlanta") by bringing it to Brickell's attention (the book being "mentioned for the Book-of-the-Month Club fellowship award"). Mitchell closes (before a long, typed postscript): "...Well, this is a heluva letter, isn't it? But it's a heluva world and steadily gets no better. I wish to God I'd choked before I ever wrote any book..."
"I WISH TO GOD I'D CHOKED BEFORE I EVER WROTE ANY BOOK"
"...In my files I have over a thousand requests for autograph books ... I can't fill them all and so I've had to refuse them all ... The requests about pages of manuscript [of Gone With the Wind] are about the same. All the Universities have been after me for all the manuscript or a part of it or a page of it; relatives, friends, collectors, etc. have come down on me about the same thing. So I've refused them all... Moreover, I want my manuscript and do not want it floating around for I intend to burn it just as soon as I get those leaves back which MacM Co. [her publisher Macmillan] inveigled out of me when I was too exhausted to argue. I haven't written any letters about my work in spite of about a million requests. First reason -- because I don't want any letters about my work floating around. Second reason, I don't know how I work, haven't the slightest idea how I work and so couldn't write much of a letter. The proof sheets are going to be burned, too, just as soon as I get them back. I don't want anyone to see them just as I did not want anyone to see the ms. pages but couldn't help myself. Don't ask why. I don't know. I suppose it is the same passion for privacy and resentment of strangers' prying that has made my life a Hell during the last few months..." For most of the remaining half of the letter Mitchell does a favor at the request of the author Minnie Hite Moody ("who wrote Death is a Little Man, a negro story laid in Atlanta") by bringing it to Brickell's attention (the book being "mentioned for the Book-of-the-Month Club fellowship award"). Mitchell closes (before a long, typed postscript): "...Well, this is a heluva letter, isn't it? But it's a heluva world and steadily gets no better. I wish to God I'd choked before I ever wrote any book..."
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Please note that a number of the letters are published in Robert Harwell's Margaret M. Mitchell, 1976.