The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent,
sixteen-year-old Scarlett O’Hara soon realizes that young men can’t resist her
charms, despite her forthright manners and her refusal to embrace her mother’s
ladylike ways. Her romantic intrigues lead her to an early marriage, but when the
war between the Union and the Southern States breaks out and she is left a young
widow, Scarlett’s life is turned upside down, and she finds herself embroiled,
together with the world surrounding her, in a long struggle for survival.
Both a coming-of-age tale and a historical epic, Gone with the Wind is regarded as
one of the great American novels, and is perhaps one of the most popular stories in
the Western canon. Famously inspiring the iconic 1939 Oscar-winning film starring
Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as the rakish but cynical Rhett Butler, it is
Margaret Mitchell’s only published novel, and a living testament to the irrepressible
resilience of the American spirit.