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2011 is the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.  Sally Tippett Rains is available for speaking engagements and she can add an element of Civil War history or Movie history to your event. Rains can speak about any aspect of Gone With the Wind, either in regular clothes or dressed in a hoop skirt to enhance your gathering.

To book rains, contact:: info@GWTWbook.com

The Making of a Masterpiece, The True Story of Margaret Mitchell's Classic Novel Gone With The Wind contains the exclusive Civil War history behind Margaret Mitchell's story. Rains had access to a scrapbook from Mitchell's family which contains pictures from the 1800's as well as stories from Mitchell's Civil War ancestors. Some of these stories are very similar to stories in Gone With The Wind.

For more information: info@GWTWbook.com

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About Margaret Mitchell and Gone With The Wind

Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900 and grew up in the days of the flappers. In her teens, she was a debutante and in the roaring 20's she was a new woman who enjoyed everything that being a flapper provided. She loved men and craved the attention of them, and perhaps it was her youthful boy craziness that inspired her character Scarlett O'Hara to be the belle of the county.

Mitchell spent much of her childhood summers at "Rural Home" which was her family's plantation in Clayton County, Georgia. Her great-grandparents, Ellen and Philip Fitzgerald, had been survivors of the Civil War. Their lives in many ways mirrored the lives of those at "Tara" the plantation in the "newly formed county" that Mitchell described in her book, Gone With The Wind. Much of this real history and the comparisons of Mitchell's ancestors' lives with those of the O'Hara family in Gone With The Wind is contained between the covers of The Making Of A Masterpiece, by Sally Tippett Rains.

Once Mitchell had her book published, it became an instant success. Though the Mitchells were a prominent family, and she had gained a certain amount of publicity on her own by writing for the newspaper, Mitchell never dreamed she would cause such a storm with her book.

The public was fascinated with Mitchell, but the fame overwhelmed her, which is why she never conducted interviews. She did not like being in the spotlight and she refused to do personal appearances, unless they were for charity. One of the most difficult things for her was the fact that she felt like she owed everything to her readers, so when fans would write, she always wrote back. People sent her requests and she tried to fulfill all of them. As time went by Mitchell became obsessed with giving back. She spent many hours filling boxes to send to the soldiers, did work for the Red Cross and many other things chronicled in the book.

In 1937, Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for writing Gone With The Wind, and then in 1940 David O. Selznick's production of the movie won 10 awards. The book was translated into many languages and sold all over the world.

The Making Of A Masterpiece fills the reader in on many of the activities and events in Margaret Mitchell's life. It also goes into the lives of others who were involved in the making of the movie Gone With The Wind. If you think there was a lot of information on this website, it is nothing compared to all that is packed into this book.