Gone With the Wind

Our daughter Linda has a love affair with the book, “Gone with the Wind.” Her collection includes a copy published in 1954 (her birth year), a 50th anniversary copy (printed to be exactly like the original, complete with “deckle” edge on the pages), a copy printed in Japanese (presented by a former boss who had been stationed in Japan), another printed in French (she bought it in Geneva, Switzerland), one in Swedish (gift from her Finnish-born sister-in-law), another in Spanish (received as a gift for her 50th birthday) and a few more, some listed here.

In 1970 on our third day in Europe, in Ulm, Germany, Linda bought a copy of “Vom Winde Verweht,” “Gone with the Wind” in German.

Several years later at a book store in Ghent, Belgium, we bought her a copy of “Gone with the Wind” in Flemish. We had already purchased the book in the Dutch language a previous year, so imagine our surprise when we got home and compared page by page and word for word, to find them to be exactly the same, only the cover was different. The surprising thing is, Scarlett O'Hara is pictured with blonde hair.

On our first visit to Poland we stopped at a book store in Warsaw and noticed people were not allowed in the store until they had a shopping basket, and there was a long line of people waiting for baskets. We waited, we looked for her book and for a small Polish/English dictionary, and found neither.

One year in Copenhagen, the movie, “Gone With the Wind,” was playing in a downtown theater, advertised by well-worn posters from years ago. I visited two book stores, but neither had the book. A bookstore clerk suggested a nearby used-book store, and success, they had a copy in excellent condition.

We remember looking for “Gone with the Wind” in book stores in Venice and in Milan, Italy, and we did buy her a copy published in Italian, but our notes do not remind us exactly where we bought it.

On our second visit to Kraków, Poland, (after the Berlin Wall came down), wonder of all wonders, a hundred yards from where we had parked, the very first bookstore where we looked, had copies of the book displayed in the front window. Maybe the only bookstore in the world with that book in the window, in the past many years.

A few days later we were in Prague, Czech Republic, and Linda was lucky again. We found a two-volume hard cover edition of “Gone With the Wind” in Czechoslovakian, in the very first bookstore we shopped. The clerk recognized the our pronunciation of the name of the book, and went directly to the shelf where several copies were stocked. Now that was amazing.

Just a few days after the publication date of the sequel to “Gone With the Wind,” called “Scarlet,” it was already in the window of the book store near the Maintor (gate) in Marktbreit, Germany. Then a day or two later, we saw it in a store in Rothenburg.

We didn’t buy a copy of “Scarlet” for Linda, if she wants that one, she can buy it for herself.