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347

MITCHELL, MARGARET

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MITCHELL, MARGARET
(1900 - 1949) American author, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her epic novel "Gone With the Wind". Outstanding and most important, late T.L.S. "Margaret Mitchell Marsh" on her letterhead, 3pp. 4to., Atlanta, Mar. 2, 1948 to her friend, a Dr. McClure in which she discusses the possibility of a sequel to her novel, Gone With the Wind! Mitchell opens her letter expressing her concern over the illness of McClure's son, and that of her husband as well. Mitchell then goes into some detail describing an aide to Douglas MacArthur who seeks copyright information for use in his posting in Japan, and hinting that perhaps McClure's knowledge in the field might be useful to the man. In small part: "...I had it on my mind to tell you about a man who may write you from Japan on copyright matters. The man is Romney Wheeler, formerly an Associated Press correspondence...I am a little vague about some of his duties [as aide to MacArthur]...When he decided to go to Japan he set about trying to gather as much information as possible about international copyright laws...Like everyone else who has heard about it, he was astounded at your odd arrangements with Japan about American copyrights...In light of what I have just written you, I found your remarks about the Japanese treaty very interesting...I hope that, when and if the United States goes into an agreement with the other nations concerning copyright of literary property, some thought will be given to the securing of all of an author's rights to his literary creation. By that I mean such things as 'commercial tie-ups,' so that in Ruritania it would be forbidden to make a 'Forever Amber' doll without Miss Windsor's permission and in Graustark one could not sell ladies' underpants and Scarlett O'Hara panties without paying me. Perhaps what I am now going to discuss is not something which would affect many authors but it is a problem with me -- the right of an author...to forbid another person to use his characters and setting for a 'sequel.' I have put in ten years in this country politely or sternly forbidding people to write sequels to 'Gone With the Wind', or 'last chapters.' In wearying numbers well-meaning people decide to write another volume for me, and equally well-meaning people write a 'last chapter' and try to get it published publicly or privately. For the most part such people abandon these schemes when it is put to them that it is just as dishonest to steal characters which are the work of another's brain as it is to steal money. In this country I can fall back on unfair trade practice if I must and, while there is little precedent, I could make a pretty good fight if I had to. But in European countries, where there is no English 'common law'...I am up against it and must depend on moral suasion. I am going through this at present in France, where it has just come to my attention that a magazine...has opened a competition with prizes for the four or five 'best last chapters' to 'Gone With the Wind'...If I do not protest and fight when someone writes a 'last chapter' to 'Gone With the Wind', the next thing I knew would be that people all over Europe were writing and marketing sequels to 'Gone With the Wind.'...Sometimes John and I are forced to laugh...at how the same reaction to 'Gone With the Wind' appears in widely separated countries, showing that people are not too different after all...The events of the last week are so very disheartening and depressing to those of us who have any knowledge and interest in European affairs. My Czech publisher has become a good friend to me...I do not know how they managed it but very abruptly some eight months ago back royalties on 'Gone With the Wind' began coming to me in large lumps. I wondered if they felt that trouble was coming and they, being honest people, were making every effort to get me money before they were encircled. I have been sending food, cigarettes and clothing to Czechoslovakia...Now I am afraid even to send a CARE package for fear it will get these good people into trouble...Now I know people all over the world, and newspaper headlines of Russia on the march mean more to me than just headlines...". Ironically, Mitchell's wish that no sequel to Gone With the Wind be penned was not fulfilled. Upon her sudden death in 1949, Mitchell's estate authorized a sequel by American author Alexandra Ripley. Titled Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, it was published in 1991, and though lambasted by critics and Gone with the Wind lovers alike, the book nonetheless earned over $5 million for Mitchell's estate. In 1998, popular Southern author Pat Conroy entered negotiations with the Mitchell estate for a further sequel to Gone With the Wind Conroy cited his love for the original text, which he calls "a posthumous victory for the Confederacy," as his main reason for wanting to write a sequel, but, many months of negotiations later, Conroy walked away from the deal in February 2000, despite its purported $4.5 million dollar paycheck. In the latest legal battles over rights to sequelize the beloved book, the Mitchell estate won, in 1998, a court injunction to ban author Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone, a critically-acclaimed parody of the Gone With the Wind rewritten from the perspective of a slave. However, three years later the injunction was lifted, and the book published in 2001, to the dismay of the Mitchell estate but delight of GWTW fans and contemporary authors. Light offsetting to the first page with two light paperclip impressions to top edge, a few pencil dockets throughout text, boldly signed at conclusion, with slight blurring to the signature, overall very good condition.
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