In memory of Alexandra Ripley

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Alexandra Ripley, née Braid (January 8, 1934, Charleston, S.C. - January 10, 2004), the only child of Alexander and Elizabeth Braid, was an American writer best known as the author of Scarlett (1991), the sequel to Gone with the Wind. Her first novel was Who's the Lady in the President's Bed? (1972). Charleston (1981), her first historical novel, was a bestseller, as were her next books On Leaving Charleston (1984), The Time Returns (1985), and New Orleans Legacy (1987). Scarlett received some damning reviews, but was very successful nonetheless.

She attended the elite Ashley Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1955 with a major in Russian. In 1958 she married Leonard Ripley, and divorced in 1963 after having two sons. She re-married with John Graham and she had other two sons. In the early 1990 the estate of Margaret Mitchell selected her to pick up the stories of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler where Mitchell left them in 1936, the year her saga of the Civil War was published. Mitchell died in 1949.

Ms. Ripley made no bones about why she wanted the assignment. ''There are two reasons why I'm doing this book,'' she said in an interview in the reference work Contemporary Authors. ''I can't resist it, and as soon as this is done I will be able to write anything I want to. I really don't know why Scarlett has such appeal. When I began writing the sequel, I had a lot of trouble because Scarlett is not my kind of person. She's virtually illiterate, has no taste, never learns from her mistakes.''

She died on Jan. 10 at her home in Richmond, Va. She was 70. Her daughter, Elizabeth Lyon Ripley, told The Associated Press that death resulted from unspecified natural causes. Her widower, retired University of Virginia faculty member John Graham, died three and half years later on July 16, 2007.

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