Gone With The Wind chapters on show

Visitors to America will soon be able to see a piece of manuscript, once thought lost, of one of the most famous novels ever written.

The last four chapters of Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell will be on display this summer at the Atlanta History Centre in Georgia.

Also on display will be the desk that Ms Mitchell used while writing the novel which became a huge best-seller and was turned into a multi Oscar-winning film.

Letters of correspondence by Ms Mitchell and foreign and first edition copies of the book will be on show from June 4 to September 5 as part of events to mark the 75th anniversary of the novel’s publication.

Atlanta-born Ms Mitchell, who never wrote another book, spent years researching and writing Gone With The Wind, drawing on her childhood memories of American Civil War veterans reliving the 1861-65 conflict against which the book’s love story of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler is played.

The premiere of the film, in 1939, was in Atlanta, with British actress Vivien Leigh playing Scarlett and Rhett being portrayed by Clark Gable. Mitchell died aged 48 in 1949 after being struck by a car when crossing a road in Atlanta.