ROAD TO TARA: The Life of Margaret Mitchell

by Anne Edwards ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 1983

The not-very-interesting life of the Gone With the Wind lady--teased out to undue length by a veteran biographer of shaky females (Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland), but with lots of behind-the-book details for GWTW aficionados. In the dullish first half here, Edwards makes all she can of Mitchell's early years: her Atlanta background, full of old relatives telling Civil Wax stories; a vivacious, hard-to-please mother who died when Peggy was in college; First Love, for an effete fiance who died in WW I (the Ashley Wilkes model, perhaps); Peggy's ambivalent attitude towards Atlanta society--wanting to be a part of it, wanting to scorn it with her 1920s-flapper style; and her first, very brief marriage to sexy, no-good Red Upshaw--an obvious Rhett Butler type (including an apparent, brutal rape after prudish Peggy left him). Then, however, following local journalism and marriage (sexless, it seems) to mild-mannered John Marsh, Peggy started writing That Book--with periods of numbing insecurity and editing help from John. (""The manuscript had become like a child of theirs."") Eventually, she was coaxed into showing the haphazard packets of pages to an editor from Macmillan. But success brought mostly misery right from the start: the pressure to finish; the editorial process (""a horror to Peggy""); her fears about the book contract. (A Macmillan editor wrote: ""May I take the liberty of pointing out that you are not dealing with a 5th rate Jewish publisher? If your contract had come from Greenberg or even A. A. Knopf, your suspicions--in fact--all suspicions might have been easily understood."") And the celebrity that came with the GWTW phenomenon ""presented its author with responsibilities that she could not shoulder"": she became defensive and hostile. . . yet, when the craze subsided, self-centered Peggy labored to keep the legend alive, becoming a rather pathetic figure till her street-accident death in 1949. Edwards isn't able to make a real psychological case out of Peggy's quirky, unengaging personality. Nor does she bring new insights to the novel's success. But anyone with a GWTW passion will be intrigued by those roman a clef angles and the manuscript-to-blockbuster transformation.

Pub Date: May 19, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields/Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION