Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1900, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell belonged to a wealthy and a politically prominent family. Encouraged by her husband, she began writing the novel that would become Gone with the Wind. Nine complete drafts of the thousand-page work, she set this epic romance against the dramatic backdrop of the Civil War. Published in 1936, ten years after she began writing it, Gone with the Wind was a smash success. It became, and still remains, one of the classic masterpieces of all time. Receiving a Pulitzer Prize in 1937, a film version of the novel was planned in the late 1930s.