In the essay below, Millichap provides a critical overview of Mitchell's novel and the circumstances around its writing and publication, taking special note of the elements that make the work especially appealing to young adults

Although Margaret Mitchell lid not consider herself a writer for young adults, her single masterpiece, Gone with the Wind, and its blockbuster film version have been perennial favorites of American teenagers, to the point that both are often included in high school and college curriculums. The increased interest of recent years following the fiftieth anniversaries of both the novel (1986) and the film (1989), as well as the publication of an authorized sequel (1992) will surely extend the popularity of Gone with the Wind into the next century. This popular phenomenon proves most interesting as Mitchell's masterwork seems a nineteenth-century book in subject, theme, and style--a twentieth-century reincarnation of the Victorian "triple-decker" romance. Thus the...