First printing. Celebrating the centennial of Margaret Mitchell's birth, a unique compilation of childhood writings by the acclaimed author of Gone With the Wind features short stories, fairy tales, journal entries, essays, and single-act plays, all penned from age 8 to 17. On a sultry summer morning, Jane Eskridge and Wailes Thomas are sorting through a lifetime of accumulated mementos in the Atlanta home Thomas has recently inherited from his mother. From among many cardboard boxes the two make a discovery of some yellowed copybooks and handmade folders which include a sample of writing bearing a child's signatureit is the signature of Margaret Mitchell. Eskridge and Thomas found two hundred pages of short stories, fairy tales, journal entries, essays, and a one-act play penned from ages eight through seventeen by the author of the classic Gone With the Wind. By her own order, all of Mitchell's personal papers were to have been destroyed after her death. The world applauded when, in the mid-1990s, a lone Mitchell short story was discovered and published. Now, with this more recent and much further ranging discovery of girlhood writings, the portrait of this prodigious talent and precocious imagination is complete. In celebration of Mitchell's centenary birthday, these revealing writings along with rare archival pieces and photographs are published here for the first time and give Mitchell's worldwide legions of admirers a rare glimpse into the soul of the brilliant young talent who would go on to write the best-selling novel of all time, Gone With the Wind. New, unread hardcover book listed in like new condition due to a slight ripple across the top of the jacket cover as well as the price has been snipped off from the inside jacket cover.