Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (16 page)

Macmillan's good luck continued when Mitchell's book began generating buzz on the European continent. Publishers in Denmark, Germany, and Sweden expressed an interest in releasing translations. Because it was such a rare event in those days for foreign publishers to consider an American book worthy of translation, Macmillan was ill suited to manage these transactions. In addition to language barriers—English was not as widely spoken in Europe as it is today—there was the inherent difficulty of long-distance communication. Currency issues and international copyright laws added further layers of complexity. To handle the details, Latham decided to turn matters over to an outside agent who specialized in these types of deals. On May 11, he wrote to Sonia Chapter of Curtis Brown, Ltd., an esteemed British literary agency, and asked her to see what she could do about selling the foreign rights.
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The editor did not expect any of the overseas publishers would come through with an offer, given the length of the book and its distinctly American story, but thought it worth a try.
¹³

Unknown to Latham, however, another agent had already been marketing
Gone With the Wind
to European publishers. Her name was Marion Saunders. An ambitious Brit who operated a small firm from her New York City apartment, she claimed to be from an aristocratic family that had lost its fortune in World War I. Forced to support herself as a young adult, she had come to America to make a living off her European connections. Although respected in the industry, she had a reputation as something of a cutthroat. French author Simone de Beauvoir once referred to her in a letter to philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre as a “real old horror.”
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Saunders had represented other Macmillan authors in the 1930s and was anxious to stake her claim on its latest discovery. Instead of approaching Latham, though, she went straight to the horse's mouth: Margaret Mitchell. Saunders wrote to Mitchell in early May 1936, announcing, in what appears to be a bald-faced lie, that she was handling the continental European rights of
Gone With the
Wind
for Macmillan. She asked to represent Mitchell for any future work, such as short stories the author might be writing.
¹⁵

Given recent events with Williams, Mitchell had little interest in dealing with agents at the moment. She responded that she did not write short stories and, therefore, did not need an agent, nor did she have plans to write another book any time soon. “If the Lord lets me keep what little sense I now possess, I never will write anything else. If I'd had any idea of the amount of grief that
Gone With the Wind
entailed, I'd have shot myself before starting it.”
¹⁶
In Mitchell's mind, this ended the matter. But she made a mistake that left the door open for Saunders to continue the conversation. Mitchell had assumed, given the spelling of the name Marion with an “o,” that Saunders was male and addressed her as such. Saunders used this as an excuse to write back, clarifying that she was a “woman agent.”
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A model of civility, Mitchell could not let the error regarding Saunders's gender go unacknowledged. She replied on May 13, apologizing for the mistake and for the abruptness of her first letter.
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Saunders had not managed to secure Mitchell as a client, but the two were now on personal correspondence terms, a status of which agents all over the country would have been envious.

The following day, Mitchell mentioned to Cole the communication from Saunders and asked what continental rights were: “Does she mean translations? God forbid. How can dialect be translated?” In any event, Saunders made a favorable impression on Mitchell. “She didn't jump down my throat, try to high pressure me or lay it on so thick that I got sick at my stomach,” the author reported to Cole.
¹⁹
In what must have seemed like de´ja` vu, Cole responded on May 18 that Saunders was another overeager agent claiming to represent
Gone With the Wind
without having bothered to obtain the authority. Saunders was not handling the continental rights, Cole explained; another agency had been hired.
²⁰
While Cole's letter expressed no opinion about Saunders, someone scribbled a note across the top of a file copy of Latham's May 11 letter to Chapter saying, “Make sure Miss Saunders doesn't get it.”
²¹

Unaware or unconcerned about Macmillan's feelings on the matter, Saunders continued to pursue Mitchell. She wrote the author again on May 22, describing her work generating interest in overseas publishers. She hinted that she had sent galleys to France and Holland, which seems an unlikely assertion, given that she would have had little opportunity to obtain proofs of the book.
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Saunders also explained to Mitchell that the foreign rights often did not amount to much money by American standards but that she welcomed the chance to work on other deals for Mitchell such as any future books she might write.

A few days later, Saunders finally got around to discussing matters with Macmillan. She contacted Latham, informing him of her advance promotional efforts. The conversation was reminiscent of the one he had had the week before in which Williams demanded credit for her advance efforts with the movie studios. Saunders must have made a persuasive case. The following day, Latham wrote to Chapter and told her to stop working on
Gone With the Wind
because, unknown to him, another agent had already secured the rights.
²³
An unsigned, handwritten note across a copy of this letter in the Macmillan files states, “Tell Miss Saunders it's all hers.”*

Saunders's powers of persuasion must have been strong indeed. Not only had she convinced Latham to let her handle the foreign rights, but she also managed to ingratiate herself with Mitchell. Despite Cole's warning that Saunders had lied to her, Mitchell remained on friendly terms with the eager agent. On May 27, Mitchell thanked Saunders for her interest in
Gone
With the Wind
. Although she did not agree to hire the woman as her personal agent, she offered an encouraging note: “I don't believe I could be lucky enough to be translated—but I sincerely wish you luck in the matter.” She then threw in some uncharacteristic gushing: “At the risk of sounding overwhelmingly girlish, I'll say that you sound like the nicest agent of them all and, God knows, I've heard from plenty!”
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It was a solid month's work for Saunders. She had wrestled the translation rights from the Curtis Brown agency—meaning she would receive a 20 percent commission on all the overseas royalties—and made a dazzling impression on Mitchell. Though she had not snagged Mitchell as a client, she had a foot firmly planted in the author's door. In the years to come, Saunders would push that door wide open, establishing herself as one of the leading characters in the
Gone With
the Wind
saga.

More important to Mitchell than flashy advertisements, book clubs, agents, and foreign publishers was the Southern press's warm reception of
Gone
With the Wind
. As soon as the review copies began to circulate, regional newspapers embraced the book, and the author did what she could to spur their affection. She sent thank-you letters to the reporters who wrote about her and made herself available to answer their questions. One of the first inquiries was from the
Chattanooga Times
in late April. When asked for information about her life, Mitchell played coy. She claimed to have no idea what the press would find interesting about little ol' her, then rambled on cheerfully for a handful of pages describing in colorful detail her family history and how the book came to be written. When a reporter she knew at the Associated Press wrote an article about her, she showered him with appreciation, proclaiming that his story was the first thing her family had been impressed by since she signed her contract: “Short of shooting John or winning the Nobel Prize I never expected to get on the A.P. . . . I am sure that when my publishers see it they will look at me with great respect and with awe, thinking me a far more important personage than they had here-to-fore imagined! And, being only human, I will endeavor not to undeceive them.”
²⁵

With the help of a clipping service Marsh had retained, Mitchell tracked the news coverage in meticulous detail. By mid-May, more than two hundred articles about her had appeared in newspapers in Georgia and neighboring states.
²⁶
The three Atlanta newspapers led the way, especially her former employer, the
Atlanta Journal
, which, in Marsh's words, “beat the drum for Peggy and the book like nobody's business.”
²⁷

By the beginning of June, bookstores were inundating Macmillan with advance orders for
Gone With the Wind
. The publisher ordered a second printing of twenty-five thousand copies.
²⁸
These books would look almost identical to the first, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Macmillan modified the dust jacket to reflect the growing certainty that
Gone With the Wind
would be its star book of the season. For the first printing, the back of the jacket had identified seventeen Macmillan “Spring Novels,” with
Gone
With the Wind
tenth on the list. On the back of the new jacket, Mitchell's novel now led a list of thirteen “New Macmillan Books.” And, as would become important later, the revised copyright page showed the new publication date of June 1936. Although Macmillan considered leaving well enough alone and indicating only the year of publication, the company again included the month as a means of distinguishing this second print run for the sake of book collectors, who would want to know the difference between this printing and the original one.
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This, too, would cause trouble later.

On June 6,
Publishers Weekly
ran a detailed story about Macmillan's advertising and promotion strategy for
Gone With the Wind
. The article announced to the book trade that the publisher had a major success on its hands and described how Macmillan was aligned firmly behind Mitchell's novel. An unnamed company official was quoted as predicting that advance orders would be one of the largest in years and that the book would prove to be a real “wow.” It is hard to imagine any booksellers reading the story who would not want to hitch their wagon to Mitchell's rising star. Indeed, some retailers were so enthusiastic about the book's prospects that they developed their own promotions to generate interest. An Ohio bookseller sent his patrons a letter soliciting prepublication orders, staking his reputation on the appeal of
Gone With the Wind
. Acknowledging that “efforts to pre-select books to suit other literary tastes are, we believe, in general practice as fruitless as they are thankless,” the store owner nonetheless recommended Mitchell's book as a novel that would give them “more solid entertainment” and would stay longer in their memory than any book in years.
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When the second printing came from the bindery in the middle of June, Macmillan began shipping crates of
Gone With the Wind
to wholesalers and distributors. At George Brett's direction, books from the first two printings were commingled so that copies of the May printing, which might have collectible value some day, would be spread throughout the trade, rather than concentrated in shipments to a few lucky stores.
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Macmillan also sent booksellers colorful, eye-catching placards, posters, and postcards to use in displays.