Margaret Mitchell Author I was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Eugene Mitchell, a lawyer, and Mary Isabelle, much referred to as Maybelle, a suffragist of Irish Catholic origin. My brother, Stephens, was four years my senior. My childhood was spent in the laps of Civil War veterans and of my maternal relatives, who had lived through the Civil War. After graduating from Washington Seminary, I attended Smith College, but withdrew during my freshman year in 1918. I returned to Atlanta to take over the household after my mother's death earlier that year from the great Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Shortly afterward, I defied the conventions of my class and times by taking a job at the Atlanta Journal. Under the name Peggy Mitchell I wrote a weekly column for the newspaper's Sunday edition, thereby making my mark as one of the first female columnists at the South's largest newspaper. My first professional writing assignment was an interview with an Atlanta socialite, whose