Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind by Ellen F. Brown, Jr. John Wiley Page A

there has rarely been a novel about the publication of which I have been so excited and to the appearance of which I have looked forward more eagerly.” 26
    Assuming Latham’s comments had calmed Mitchell’s nerves, Cole told her friend to hurry and have the photograph retaken. She also suggested Mitchell give more thought to the name Scarlett, worrying that it sounded like a Good Housekeeping story and might be confused with Sylvia Scarlett , a recently released and widely panned motion picture starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. 27 Cole’s second-guessing of Scarlett threw Mitchell into a panic. After two months of around-the-clock effort, her nerves were wearing thin. In addition to the case of boils, her eyes bothered her, as did the back injury from the 1934 car accident. 28 If Cole had a better idea for the character’s name, Mitchell was glad to hear it. But Macmillan had to make up its mind. Upon receiving Latham’s stamp of approval for Scarlett, Mitchell had paid a typist fifty cents an hour to convert all the Pansy references in the manuscript to the new name. The frustrated author did not relish paying to have them changed again. “Personally, we could call her this damn thing and take my busted back and bacilli staphylococci to bed for a long period.” 29 Until Macmillan decided what the name would be, Mitchell refused to go any further on the manuscript.
    Regretting having opened this can of worms, Cole immediately apologized to the frazzled author and told her to get back to her writing. “For heaven’s sake, don’t stop work of any sort and go right along with Scarlett,” the editor replied. 30

    In the midst of those discussions, Mitchell bought herself some time by sending Cole the second and fourth chapters and sections of a few others she thought might be useful to the dust jacket artist. 31 She also identified scenes that might work as a cover illustration, such as Scarlett and Mammy arriving at Atlanta’s train yard; Scarlett leading a broken-down horse and cart over a hill; and Scarlett standing on a porch looking at the cavalry in the distance against a sunset. Mitchell offered suggestions for the format of the book, recommending that Macmillan use the same font as in its recently released Time Out of Mind . As for the binding, she opposed silver or gold lettering on a light-colored cloth, fearing the type might wear away over time and leave the exterior blank.
    Latham thought little of Mitchell’s ideas for the artwork, but at least they were something to work with. 32 Macmillan hired freelance artist George Carlson to design the cover. Considering Mitchell’s insistence that the jacket have a Southern sensibility, he was an unusual choice. Not only was Carlson a lifelong New England resident with no connections to the South, but his mother had worked as a housekeeper for Union general Ulysses S. Grant. 33 Had Mitchell known of his background—there is no evidence she did—one wonders if she would have appreciated the irony, given her state of mind that fall.
    With Macmillan satisfied for the time being, Mitchell’s energies that November focused on fact-checking the many still unsettled historical details. Her father and brother reviewed parts of the manuscript and suggested several adjustments. She also brought in outside reinforcements. She admitted to Wilbur G. Kurtz, a local history expert, that “in a weak moment” she had written a Civil War novel and needed his expertise with the military descriptions in the section about General Sherman’s march on Atlanta. 34 For help on the Reconstruction-era chapters, she turned to Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution and author of a book on Georgia history. And, not willing to let the minutest detail go untended, she even wrote an agriculturist for assistance pinning down a saying she had heard as a child about the difference between “wheat