The Civil War's Real Rhett Butler: George Alfred Trenholm
Sea Classics › Vol. 43 Nbr. 4, April 2010
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The Civil War's Real Rhett Butler: George Alfred Trenholm
When ruggedly handsome entrepreneur Rhett Butler uttered the never to be forgotten farewell, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," he coined not only the most famous romantic goodbye in American fiction but made his scheming wife, Scarlett CHara, instantly the most popular heroine ofthe Twentieth Century.
Such were the powerful characterizations drawn by author Margaret Mitchell that her fictional characters sparked an entire generation's interest in America's tumultuous Civil War with her Pulitzer Prize winning 1938 novel Gone With The Wind. Yet the old saying that truth is always more celebrated than fiction was never more profound than the fact that this milestone novel's leading love interest, Rhett Butler, was based more on truth than fiction - that the adventurous life led by Civil War Confederate profiteer and patriot George Trenholm was indeed the thinly disguised inspiration for Mitchell's classic über hero Rhett Butler.How the novel came to be is in itself an amazing story. While working for the Atlanta Journal, reporter Margaret Mitchell had broken her ankle and found herself bedridden and bored. Addicted to Southern history, she had her newlymarrie...See the full content of this document
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