'My dear, I don't give a damn. 'Margaret Mitchell's page-turning, sweeping American epic has been a classic for over eighty years. Beloved and thought by many to be the greatest of the American novels, Gone with the Wind is a story of love, hope and loss set against the tense historical background of the American Civil War. The lovers at the novel's centre - the selfish, privileged Scarlett O'Hara and rakish Rhett Butler - are magnetic: pulling readers into the tangled narrative of a struggle to survive that cannot be forgotten.