This article originally appeared in the September, 1997 issue of BIBLIO Magazine. It is reprinted here with the permission of its author, John Wiley, Jr.

Like most Americans born after World War II, I became acquainted with Gone With the Wind through the 1939 film version starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Growing up in the small town of Lynchburg, Virginia, I had heard about this story of the Old South, but it wasn't until the spring of 1968, when the film was re-released, that my mother took my sister and me to see the classic.

Nearly thirty years have passed since that April day, but I still recall exactly how I felt coming out of the downtown Warner Theater late in the afternoon: it was as though I had been gone for years, as though I had actually lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction and had known these people named Scarlett and Rhett, Melanie and Ashley, and Mammy. I was young - just days away from turning ten - and impressionable, but the sweep and drama of the film had left their mark ... and immediately made me eager to read the book upon which it was based.

A short time later, during a visit to the county bookmobile, I filled out a request card for Margaret Mitchell's novel to be brought from the main library on the bookmobile's next visit. That request - which in those days required parental approval! - delivered a surprise: the long movie I had seen and loved was based upon an even longer book. But I tackled all 1,037 pages with the sincerity and gusto of a new convert.

It took me more than a month, which meant two renewals, to read the story of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. Some parts, particularly Rhett's relationship with that nice Belle Watling woman and Ashley's mixed-up feelings for Scarlett, went right over my head. But when I finally reached the emotionally draining conclusion, I made an immediate decision: the book was even better than the movie, and I wanted to devour it again!

The true test of a good story lies in whether readers can suspend their knowledge of the outcome and reread it as if for the very first time. After more than a dozen readings, I find Gone With the Wind still offers that initial magic. Naturally, the characters are better developed in the novel than in the film version. Mitchell was a masterful storyteller and worked hard to keep her narrative simple. As I grew older and began leaning toward a writing career myself, I vowed during subsequent readings that I would pay more attention to her style and descriptive powers, which could make you smell the freshly plowed red Georgia earth and the pine-scented woods, and make you feel the heat of a hot, southern August night and the terror of hiding in the woods and watching an enemy army march by in the darkness. But time and time again, the sheer force of the narrative distracted me from my analytical task. Inevitably, the story itself would grab me and pull me along.

A lover of books and reading for as long as I can remember, I knew when it came time to return that novel to the bookmobile - even at age ten - that I wanted a copy of Gone With the Wind for my very own, to read again whenever I wished. Thus began an obsession that for three decades has consumed my spare time, my living space, and a great deal of my money.

It started, as most collections do, simply enough. My first purchase was the mass market paperback edition - bought at a school book fair for $1.25. The following Christmas, one of my presents was the $6.95 hardback version of the novel. Today, although my collection of editions of Gone With the Wind numbers more than 350 copies and contains some rare and valuable books, the two editions I obtained first still hold places of honor on my shelves.

I cannot recall exactly when I made the decision to try to locate a copy of every one of the almost fifty editions of Gone With the Wind that have been produced in the United States. (I am using the term "edition" to mean an officially repackaged version of the original book, always including a different binding.) As with all such projects, the search has been lengthy and sometimes expensive, filled with many disappointments (a bookdealer announcing over the phone, "I'm sorry, I sold that yesterday.") and the occasional triumph ("Yes, that's still available. Are you interested?"). Weeks-long searches involving dozens of letters and phone calls to antiquarian-book dealers have ended in failure, while serendipitous stops at out-of-the-way stores have sometimes uncovered treasures that have brought me one step closer to my goal.

Since I began seriously collecting GWTW-related and Mitchell-related memorabilia in the early 1970s, about twenty editions have been printed in the United States. From the 1975 Margaret Mitchell Anniversary Edition to last year's slipcased Sixtieth Anniversary Edition, most of these have been relatively easy to obtain as they've been issued. The more difficult prizes - various limited editions produced over the years and, of course, the "holy grail" first edition - have proven more difficult to locate but ultimately more rewarding when found.

I collect because of that same indefinable force that drives most collectors. Whether it's the challenge of the search, the joy of the find, or a sense of completion, I revel in locating another copy of this book. Displayed on my shelves, basically in chronological order, my copies offer a fascinating glimpse of the public's continuing love affair with this story. Surprisingly, though, considering the popularity of the 1939 film version, which has overshadowed the book in the public's mind, few of the domestic editions are tied to the film. Of those that are, most are mass-market paperbacks. (Overseas, the opposite holds true: the visages of Gable and Leigh decorate the majority of the book's foreign editions.)

The cornerstone of any book collection - no matter the title - is, of course, a first edition of that work. And like so many of the events comprising the history of Gone With the Wind, the story of its first edition contains a strange twist.

The Macmillan Company initially scheduled the book for release on 21 April 1936; this later was delayed until 5 May. When word came in mid-April that the Book-of-the-Month Club had chosen Mitchell's novel as a summer selection, Macmillan already had completed its first run of 10,000 copies. These books - which contain the words "Published May, 1936" on the copyright page - were bound and shipped to reviewers and to bookstores that had placed advance orders. They are the true first edition. Subsequent printings contain the notation "Published June, 1936."

There also is a key difference in the dust jackets of these early printings. The back panel of the book's original dust jacket for the May printing is headlined "Macmillan Spring Novels," with Gone With the Wind the second title listed in the second column. The June reprint (and printings throughout the first half of July) came with a dust jacket titled on the back "New Macmillan Books," with Gone With the Wind listed first.

I purchased my first first edition (with a first-issue dust jacket) in 1982, shortly after I began my earliest newspaper job out of college. The $600 I paid was a staggering sum of money at that time - more than a month's salary in the notoriously low-paying journalism profession - but well worth it to me. I still get a thrill from holding that book, knowing this is how it all began. Several years later, I obtained a second first edition, this one inscribed by Mitchell to an Atlanta woman whom she called "almost kissing kin."

While it is generally the most expensive and most sought-after, a first edition of Gone With the Wind is neither the rarest nor the most difficult edition to locate. That honor goes to three limited editions released in 1939, 1956, and 1968:

To mark the film's premiere in Atlanta in late 1939, Macmillan released a two-volume boxed edition of the novel that was sold exclusively at the city's Davison-Paxon department store. Limited to 1,000 numbered copies and priced at a hefty $7.50, the book sold poorly. Over the years, many of the slipcases, which were made slightly too small for the books, were torn and discarded. Consequently, a complete copy in slipcase and original glacine wrappers of this first two-volume edition is an extremely rare collectible.

In 1968, the Limited Editions Club printed a two-volume, slipcased edition of the novel featuring illustrations by artist John Groth. The printing was limited to 1,500 numbered copies, each signed by Groth.

The rarest edition of Gone With the Wind is the one published for the 7 April 1956 dedication of "White Columns," the new Peachtree Street headquarters of Atlanta's WSB radio and television stations. Five hundred copies of the book, with a dedication page and frontispiece showing the WSB building, were bound in maroon leather. The books were un-numbered and came in a light-blue slipcase that contained no illustration or lettering. Like the 1939 edition, most of these cases have been discarded, making a complete copy a prized rarity.

The edition that took me the longest time to locate was the 1965 Deluxe Edition, which, curiously, was simply a dust-jacketed reissue of the 1961 slipcased Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, featuring illustrations by Ben Stahl. At least three printings of the Deluxe Edition exist, but for years it seemed I never again would locate the $10 book I had seen as a youth but had been unable to afford. When my luck finally changed, the copy I found included a nice surprise - an inscription and an original pen-and-ink drawing of Scarlett by Stahl.

In 1987 - a year after a small celebration in Atlanta marked the novel's golden anniversary - I began writing a newsletter for Gone With the Wind fans. Last year, when the book quietly turned sixty (Atlanta was preoccupied with a little event called the Olympics), I unveiled a redesigned newsletter and rechristened it The Scarlett Letter. A quarterly publication with more than 500 subscribers - including fans in Australia, England, France, Japan, and New Zealand - the sixteen- to twenty-page newsletter covers the latest news about this literary and cinematic phenomenon. The newsletter also has sponsored three GWTW Forums, the last of which in Atlanta was attended by nearly 150 people.

Over the years, as many collectors do, I have expanded my collecting interests. Among related items I continue to seek are foreign editions of Mitchell's novel - to date, I have located copies in thirty languages from thirty-three countries - original book reviews, and early promotional items such as book-shaped lockets and leather buttons.

Since I've always found Mitchell herself fascinating, I also began collecting items related to her, from biographies (domestic and foreign) to letters and other autographed pieces. I now have a Christmas card signed "Peggy and John [Marsh, her husband]," a handwritten invitation to a party Mitchell hosted for fellow Atlanta author Medora Field Perkerson, a letter from the author to a reader in which she explains how to distinguish a first edition of Gone With the Wind, and a thank-you card sent by the family after her tragic death in 1949. (Mitchell was struck and fatally injured by a speeding automobile while walking across Peachtree Street.)

After Mitchell's death, John Marsh destroyed most of the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind. In a codicil to his will, he wrote that his intensely private wife "believed that an author should stand or fall before the public on the basis of the author's published work. She believed that little was ever gained from studying an author's manuscript and private papers, and that, more often than not, this led to false and misleading conclusions. ... She placed upon me the duty of destroying her papers if she should die without having done it." However, Marsh spared some selected chapters and notes in the event the need ever arose to prove Mitchell's authorship; these remnants remain in a sealed envelope in an Atlanta bank vault.

Among the collectibles that have eluded me so far are most of the pieces produced to promote the novel in 1936, such as Macmillan catalogs and "giant books, postcards and sales-aids," as well as an admittance card to Mitchell's 18 August 1949 funeral. I did stumble across a Fall 1936 Macmillan catalog - which included two pages on Gone With the Wind as well as a special-order postcard for the book - but the Spring 1936 catalog, which announced Gone With the Wind to the world, and an original review slip continue to top my "wants" list.

And so the search continues, as it must. For a collector, the pursuit gives tomorrow its meaning. After all, tomorrow is another book.