TLS, one page, 8.5 x 11, July 11, 1936. Mitchell writes to Mr. Spaulding. In part: “Thank you for the review you enclosed, as well as a copy of the radio program. Your enclosures were the first news I had had from your section of the country, and I was very proud and happy at the good send-off you gave me. I only wish I could have heard the radio program. You ask if I have published anything before ‘Gone with the Wind.’ No, this is my first writing, unless you count feature articles on the Atlanta Journal, where I was a reporter for some years. I have neither written nor published any other novels, short stories, or poems; and perhaps you can understand why I now feel that I will never write anything else if I keep my sanity. One thousand thirty-seven pages are an awful lot of pages! Will you please thank for me Miss Helen Fairall for the grand and exciting review in the ‘Register.’ Please tell her how happy I was that she caught the underlying ideas of the novel, and thank her too for her remark about my ‘tranquil prose.’ so many of the critics have hammered on me about my utter lack of any style that I practically purred at reading her words!” After signing, Mitchell adds a handwritten postscript, which she signs as “M. M. M.”: “The above sounds so cold and formal and I am neither. What I really want to say is ‘How kind you are! How much I thank you!” Gone with the Wind was officially published less than two weeks earlier, on June 30. Intersecting mailing folds (lightly touching signature), some light creases, and a few very subtle wrinkles, otherwise fine condition. Unusually early content relating to Mitchell’s career and the novel that came to occupy a unique niche in American literature! Auction LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
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