MARGARET MITCHELL, REPORTER
Margaret Mitchell | Author
Patrick Allen | Editor
$23.95NOW $12.00 hardcover
- 352 pages with 9 photographs
- 1-892514-86-9 hardcover
- Journalism | Regional
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Jazz Age Journalism from the Author of
Gone With the Wind
the book
The sixty-four columns in Margaret Mitchell, Reporter present a never-before-seen portrait of a lively, far-ranging mind and an insightful observer well on the way to her full literary power long before the world even knew her name.
More than a decade before Margaret Mitchell the novelist conceived the immortal fictive world of Gone With the wind, Margaret Mitchell the reporter was pounding the real-life streets of her natal Atlanta in search of the who, what, when, and where of her popular columns in the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. Defying convention, the recent debutante took the early morning streetcar to the spittoon-filled, hard-swearing offices of her big-city newspaper to "hunt and peck" on an old Underwood typewriter as one of the first woman columnists at the South's largest newspaper. From 1922 until 1926, Mitchell completed dozens of articles, interviews, sketches, and book reviews, only a handful of which have ever been reprinted. Included here are those pieces singled out by Mitchell as among her favorites, those of which she was most proud.
The tendency to draw parallels between the personae of the real-life Mitchell and her most famous fictional heroine are irresistible. Likewise, in this collection there are new and poignant insights into Mitchell's own sensibilities, passions, and opinions. Her portraits and personality sketches, in particular, show an early priomise of her ability to draw the kind of unforgettable characters which have made her Gone With the Wind the most translated and best-selling novel in history. Even as a putatively neutral reporter, the irrepressible personality of the observer shines through and, taken as a whole, this collection of Mitchell's journalism transcends the simple fact-gathering of the reporter's trade to give a portrait of the artist as a young woman and a compelling snapshot at life in the Jazz Age South.
INCLUDING:
«Mitchell's first professional writing assignment—an interview with an Atlanta socialite whose couture-buying trip to Italy was interrupted by the Fascist takeover.
«Conversations of the flapper-era famous and infamous, including matinee idol Rudolph Valentino and Harry K. Thaw, convicted murderer of high-society architect Stanford White.
«A jailhouse interview with a Dekalb County, Georgia, convict who made artificial flowers from scraps and sold them from his cell to support his family.
«The concerns of the Jazz Age beauty: can bobbed-hair girls be good?; will Atlanta women ever go for the knickerbocker?; which Atlanta men have mastered the newest dance steps and slang?
«A rollicking account of Georgia debutantes afoot in Egypt as King Tutankhamen's tomb is explored.
«A sketch of a ten-year-old's poignant visit to the governer of Georgia appealing for a pardon for her mother, a "lifer" at the state prison farm.
«Profiles of prominent Georgia Civil War generals, the research for which, scholars believe, led her to her work on Gone With the Wind.
«Chronicles of the youth rebellion of the 1920's which resulted in the end of debutante culture and the advent of the New Woman.
the editor
Patrick Allen is senior editor at Hill Street Press.
also of interest: Celestine Sibley, Reporter
also of interest: Before Scarlett: The Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell
also of interest: Margaret Mitchell House & Museum
also of interest: Atlanta: An Illustrated History