MITCHELL, Margaret (her copy).

£15,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Latin-English Dictionary for the Use of Junior Students. A resonant literary artefact from a formative period of Mitchell's life: her family's copy of a dictionary used in her early days at Smith College and inscribed by her upon enrolment. A gift from her father, a prominent Atlanta lawyer and historian, it is inscribed by both generations on the front pastedown: "Margaret Mitchell, Smith College, Sept. 24, 1918", and above, her father's inscription from his own university days: "Eugene Muse Mitchell, University of Georgia, December 15, 1882". Both father and daughter have practised their signatures elsewhere in the volume.It was Mitchell's suffragist mother, May Belle Stephens Mitchell, who encouraged her to attend Smith, the prestigious female liberal arts school; she wanted her daughter to be educated as preparation for life's vagaries. May Belle loomed large as a figure of admiration and influence in Mitchell's early years, but she did not live to witness the fruits of her daughter's schooling and the literary success of Gone with the Wind. In 1919 she died of influenza. This and the death of Mitchell's fiancé in action during the First World War prompted Mitchell to abandon her studies after her freshman year. She left Massachusetts and returned to the South to assume a role in her family's household, supporting her father and stepping into her mother's role of a society hostess.

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