Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, one of the best-
selling novels of all time and the basis for a blockbuster
1939 movie, was published on June 30, 1936.

In 1926, Mitchell was forced to quit her job as a reporter
at the Atlanta Journal to recover from a series of physical
injuries. With too much time on her hands, Mitchell soon
grew restless. Working on a Remington typewriter, a gift
from her second husband, John R. Marsh, in their cramped 
one-bedroom apartment, Mitchell began telling the story
of an Atlanta belle named Pansy O’Hara.

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell
(November 8, 1900 – August 16, 1949)

First-edition cover

George Orwell’s novel of a dystopian future, 1984, was
published on June 8, 1949. The novel’s all-seeing leader,
known as “Big Brother,” became a universal symbol for
intrusive government and oppressive bureaucracy.

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair ) who was born in India,
the son of a British civil servant.

Eric Arthur Blair
(25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950)

On May 6, 1940, John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

The book traces the fictional Joad family of Oklahoma as they
lose their family farm and move to California in search of a
better life. 

One of Steinbeck’s most effective works of social commentary,
the novel also won the National Book Award.

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr.
(February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968)

Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and
the Dead, was published on May 4, 1948. The book is critically
acclaimed and widely considered one of the best novels to
come out of World War II.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (1923 – 20007)

Atlanta magazine writer Margaret Mitchell (above) earned the
Pulitzer Prize in Novels for her breathtaking work of historical
fiction, "Gone with the Wind," on this day in history, May 3, 1937.

"Gone with the Wind," Mitchell’s 1,000-page Civil War saga, is
one of the world’s most successful novels. Even today, it enjoys
a global following.