In approving Ripley to write “Scarlett,” the Mitchell estate had been impressed by her three previous Southern historical novels - “Charleston” in 1981, “On Leaving Charleston” in 1984 and “The New Orleans Legacy” in 1987. She would go on to write two more, “From Fields of Gold” in 1994, again set in the post-Civil War South, and “A Love Divine” in 1996, a saga of Joseph of Arimathea who aided Jesus Christ. Prior to Ripley’s stint as what Kelman branded “the contracted laborer” for the sequel, Ripley had published four novels. “They blasted it for being bloated, sloppy, meandering, boring and execrably written.

“As Scarlett herself might say, the critics have jumped on this book like ducks on a June bug,” Suanne Kelman wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail. When her book was published - after Ripley went on strike for four months over what she considered errant editing by her publisher - reviewers frothed at their keyboards. In 1984, the Mitchell estate - by then two nephews - switched agents and tactics, deciding to authorize a novel rather than the movie sequel. In addition to various screenplays, one writer they hired, novelist/biographer Anne Edwards, actually wrote a 750-page manuscript novel, “Tara: The Continuation of Gone With the Wind.” The movie became bogged down in litigation and has never been made.

In 1975, the estate contracted with producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown to create a sequel motion picture. With Rhett walking out the door, leaving Scarlett with the immortal line “My dear, I don’t give a damn,” (Hollywood added “frankly”), Mitchell believed she had written “a natural and proper ending” to her story.īut her heirs thought differently, pursuing an income-producing sequel - movie, book or both - before the estate’s copyright on the characters expired in 2011. Mitchell, who died in an automobile crash in 1949, never wanted her novel of the Civil War South to have a sequel. It topped the bestseller list for 15 weeks, even though reviewers - as the author anticipated - trashed it. As for Ripley’s project, her 823-page book, “Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” published in 1991 was translated into 18 languages and sold well more than 1 million copies.

New Orleans Legacy by Alexandra Ripley