Description
TLS signed “Margaret Mitchell Marsh,”
One page, 7 x 11
April 9, 1936
Letter to W. Colston Leigh, in part: “I was unable to write until today. As soon as I mailed the last galley proofs to Macmillan, I had a minor operation on my hand and it has been very troublesome about healing…Mr. Latham must have been pulling your leg about me being a speaker. I have only made one speech in my life, and that was last week, and, God helping me, I never intend to make another. I am small, unimpressive, afflicted with stage fright and have a loathing for crowds of strangers. I was jockied into making the above mentioned speech only because the expected speaker didn’t come and the newspapers in that town, needing a speaker, swore they would review my book and compare it with The Little Colonel and Diddy, Dumps and Tot if I didn’t come…I can’t see that I’d be a draw as a lecturer. I’m not a speaker, I’m not yet a writer and may never be one if the critics don’t like me, I’m not famous so that people would come to look at me just for curiosity and I have no burning message to tell the world. In fact I have no notion what I could possibly talk about that would be of any interest to anyone except my family…. But I do thank you for your offer. You can’t imagine how it flattered me!” Mitchell makes a few handwritten corrections to the text. Affixed at the top to a scrapbook page; the reverse has an affixed TLS by Jonathan W. Daniels. In fine condition. A remarkable, revealing letter from Mitchell, who would become famous just weeks later with the June 30th release of Gone With the Wind.
