William Gilmore Simms

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William Gilmore Simms (April 17, 1806 – June, 1870) was a southern American poet, novelist and historian whose novels achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. In recent decades, though, Simms' novels have fallen out of favor. He is also remembered for his strong support of slavery.

Contents 1 Simms' Life 2 Simms' Early Writings 3 Simms Popular Novels about the South 4 Simms as Historian 5 Simms' Pro-Slavery Writings 6 Simms' Final Years 7 See also 8 External links 9 References

[edit] Simms' Life

Simms was born in Charleston, South Carolina of Scottish-Irish ancestors. His mother died during his infancy, and his father failed in business and joined Coffee's Indian fighters. As a result, Simms was brought up by his grandmother. As he grew up, Simms worked as a clerk in a drug store and studied law, with the bar of Charleston admitting him to practice in 1827. However, he soon abandoned this profession for literature.^[1]

[edit] Simms' Early Writings

At the age of eight he first wrote poetry, and in his 19th year he produced a Monody on Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (Charleston, 1825). Two years later, in 1827, Lyrical and Other Poems and Early Lays appeared; and in 1828 he began journalism, editing and partly owning the City Gazette. The enterprise failed. Simms then devoted his attention entirely to writing and in rapid succession published Tile Vision of Cones, Cain, and Other Poems (1829), The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris (1830), and his strongest poem, Atlantis, a story of the sea (1832). Atlantis established his fame as an author. His short novel, Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, was published in 1833 and made Simms known to a national audience.^[2]

[edit] Simms Popular Novels about the South

Simms wrote a number of popular novels during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, usually focusing on the pre-colonial and colonial periods of Southern history. These included such titles as The Yemassee (1835); The Lily and the Totem, or, The Huguenots in Florida (1850); Vasconselos (1853) and The Cassique of Kiawah (1859). Many critics believe The Cassique of Kiawah to be Simms’ best written work.

Simms also wrote eight novels set in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War, beginning with The Partisan (1835) and Katherine Walton (1851). Other titles included Mellichampe (1836), The Kinsmen (1841), The Forayers (1855), Eutaw (1856), and Joscelyn (1867). Finally, Simms wrote ten novels dealing with the expansion into the frontier territory from Georgia to Louisiana, such as Richard Hurdis; or, the Avenger of Blood. A Tale of Alabama (1838)and Border Beagles; A Tale of Mississippi (1840). In 1852, Simms published The Tennessean’s Story his only full-length work of Southern humor.

By the mid 1840s, Simms' fame for his novels was so great that Edgar Allan Poe declared Simms to be, "The best novelist which this country has, on the whole, produced."^[3] However, despite having achieved a very good literary reputation during his lifetime, today Simms' novels are, for the most part, out of print.

[edit] Simms as Historian

Simms was one of the best, and most respected, historians of his day. His History of South Carolina (1840) served for several generations as the standard school textbook on the state's history. He also wrote enormously popular biographies of Revolutionary War heroes Francis Marion, Nathanael Greene, and John Laurens, as well as John Smith and the Chevalier Bayard. Additionally, Simms was a popular lecturer on American history and accumulated one of the largest collections of Revolutionary War manuscripts. Unfortunately, most of this collection was lost when Sherman's army burned his home.^[4]

[edit] Simms' Pro-Slavery Writings

Today Simms is most known for his pro-slavery or Anti-Tom novel The Sword and the Distaff. The novel was written in response to the 1852 publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist novel focusing on the evils of slavery.

Even though The Sword and the Distaff came out only a few months after Stowe's novel, it contains a number of sections and discussions that are clearly debating Stowe's book and view of slavery. The novel focuses on the Revolutionary War and its aftermath through the lives of Captain Porgy and one of his slaves. Many of Simms' other writings took a similar pro-slavery viewpoint.^[5]

Simms' book was one of between twenty or thirty Anti-Tom novels written after Stowe's book. As in Simms' book, these Anti-Tom novels tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over child-like slaves in a benevolent extended-family-style plantation. Simms' novel was popular enough that it was reprinted in 1854 under the title Woodcraft.^[6]

To counter this type of fiction, a number of former slaves such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass wrote slave narratives, which painted a much harsher version of plantation life.^[7]

[edit] Simms' Final Years

In Simms' later years, he became part of the southern plantation class and firmly supported slavery and southern secession. During the American Civil War Simms espoused the side of the Secessionists in a weekly newspaper and suffered damage at the hands of the Federal troops when they entered Charleston. He served in the state House of Representatives in 1844–1846, after which he was defeated in the election for lieutenant-governor by only one vote.^[8] The University of Alabama conferred on him the degree of LL.D. He died at Charleston in 1870. A large bust of Simms is centrally located in Charleston's Battery Park.

[edit] See also

• Southern literature
• Anti-Tom literature

[edit] External links

• The William Gilmore Simms Society
• Works by William Gilmore Simms at Project Gutenberg
• complete text of Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal
• Complete biography of Simms
• Complete text of The Sword and the Distaff

[edit] References