Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1900, Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell belonged to a wealthy and a politically prominent family. She spent her early childhood on Jackson Hill, east of downtown Atlanta, and grew up in Southern culture. 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. It was her only novel published during her lifetime.