Learn the backstory of Atlanta’s most famous novel

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Margaret Mitchell House
Margaret Mitchell House

Photograph courtesy of Atlanta History Center

Shortly after Margaret Mitchell left her job as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal in the mid-1920s, she sat down at a desk at her ground-floor apartment on Peachtree Street—she and her husband, John Marsh, affectionately referred to the unit as “the dump”—and began writing the bulk of a Southern soap opera that became just as much a part of Atlanta’s DNA as Coca-Cola. Surrounded by hand-me-down furniture and walls she painted herself, the writer dreamed up a tale of antebellum belles and debonair Lotharios who frankly, my dear, did not give a damn. Now owned by the Atlanta History Center, the apartment building stands as a literary events space and a museum to Mitchell, her most famous novel, her lesser-known works, and her philanthropy. 979 Crescent Avenue, 404-249-7015, atlantahistorycenter.com/mmh

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