Margaret Mitchell, Reporter - Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell, Reporter by Margaret Mitchell..Nearly a decade and a half before the novelist Margaret Mitchell conceived the immortal fictive world of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell the cub reporter was pounding the real-life streets of her Atlanta hometown in search of the who, what, when, and where for her popular weekly columns in the Atlanta Journal. Showing the pluck that would have made her recently deceased suffragette mother proud -- only two years after women won the vote- and defying convention,

 Mitchell took on the all-male, spittoon-filled, hard-swearing offices of the big city newspaper to "hunt and peck" out her weekly. From 1922 to 1926, Mitchell completed hundreds of articles, interviews, sketches, and think pieces. Gathered here for the first time are the best of Mitchell's journalism -- colorful portraits that reflect her often off-color social interests. Her portraits and personality sketches show an early promise of her ability to draw the kind of unforgettable characters which have made her Gone With the Wind the most translated and best selling novel in history. As compelling as Scarlett and Rhett, Mitchell gives us vivid images from real life including: -- a portrait of an voodoo conjurer who sold talismans to ward off grave robbers during a rash of Atlanta grave robbings

-- conversations of the flapper-era famous and infamous, including matinee idol Rudolph Valentino; Gilda Gray, the "shimmy queen; " Tiger Flowers, first black middleweight boxing champ; and Harry K. Thaw, convicted murderer of high-society architect Stanford White

-- a jailhouse interview with a Georgia convict who made artificial flowers from scraps and sold them to support his family

-- an introduction to W.H. Felton, theGeorgia-native who was the first female to serve in the U.S. Senate

These portraits, alternately amusing and thought-provoking, appear alongside the topical concerns of a Jazz Age beauty and unfolding new freedoms for women