The archdiocese of Atlanta has received a multimillion-dollar windfall from the fortune earned by the bestselling Civil War-era novel Gone with the Wind.
The bequest from Joseph Mitchell, nephew of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Margaret Mitchell, includes a 50 per cent share of the trademark and literary rights to the novel.
Also included are a collection of signed first editions of Gone with the Wind in various languages and some of Margaret Mitchell’s personal effects and library.
Mr Mitchell, a member of the parish of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta and the last direct descendant of the Mitchell family, also left his home to the archdiocese.
“This gift is a reservoir of the funds earned through the genius of Margaret Mitchell and her depiction of the harsh struggles of Southern life during and after the Civil War,” said Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta.
“The Mitchell family has a proud Catholic legacy, and this gift will allow that legacy and that pride to be shared with many others in the archdiocese.”
The Catholic roots of the Mitchell family come through Margaret Mitchell’s mother, Maybelle Stephens Mitchell, whose father, John Stephens, was born in Ireland and whose mother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, descended from one of the earliest Catholic families in Georgia.
In a biography of Margaret Mitchell, her brother Russell Stephens Mitchell said their mother was educated in a convent school in Quebec and was so concerned with teaching and defending the Catholic faith she helped found the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia, made up of prominent lay Catholics who wrote and spoke to explain Catholic beliefs and defend the church against anti-Catholicism.
The archdiocese says it hopes that the collection of “artifacts that were part of the provenance of Margaret Mitchell” will in the future be loaned to a major institution for public display.
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