Simms, William Gilmore (1806–70),Charleston author, began his literary career by writing romantic verse in the vein of Byron, who strongly influenced the local literary standards that Simms earnestly tried to meet. He began to write novels during a brief visit to the North, but his first work, Martin Faber (1833), a psychological study of a criminal, was not indicative of his talents, for he made his reputation with romances of the frontier and South Carolina history. Guy Rivers (1834), which he called the first of his “regular novels,” deals with the life of Georgia desperadoes. The Yemassee (1835) is a story of Indian warfare in his own state, and The Partisan (1835), also set there, is a romance of the Revolution. Thus, within two years, Simms had begun writing on the three different subjects for which he is noted.

In the vein of Guy Rivers followed the series known as the Border Romances, concerned with colonial and 19th‐century life in the South, which includes Richard Hurdis (1838), Border Beagles (1840), Beauchampe (1842), Helen Halsey; or, The Swamp State of Conelachita (1845), Charlemont (1856), and, in magazine form only, Voltmeier; or, The Mountain Men (1869) and The Club of the Panther: A Mountain Legend (1869). Generally included with the Border Romances are The Yemassee and his other depictions of Indians, The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845–46) and The Cassique of Kiawah (1859), a novel.

The Partisan was the first of a series known as the Revolutionary Romances, dealing with life in the South during the Revolution and centering on the activities of Marion, Greene, and other generals. Among these books are Mellichampe (1836); The Kinsmen (1841), revised as The Scout (1854); Katharine Walton (1851); The Sword and the Distaff (1853), revised as Woodcraft (1854); The Forayers (1855); and Eutaw (1856). Joscelyn: A Tale of the Revolution (1867) is not usually considered one of the series.

Two of the Border Romances, Beauchampe and Charlemont, form a sequence dealing with the Kentucky Tragedy, and show Simms tending toward the psychological interest of his first novel. He also made unsuccessful attempts to deal with Spanish backgrounds in Pelayo (1838) and its sequel, Count Julian (1845). The Damsel of Darien (1839) is concerned with Balboa, and Vasconselos (1853) deals with Mexican history.

Simms, who was tremendously proud of South Carolina, and particularly of genteel, conservative Charleston, was, as the son of a poor storekeeper, snubbed by the social oligarchy, and yet remained loyal to the local taboos. The more he was slighted, the more he defended the society. Writing romances was an insufficient means of expressing his local patriotism, and he tried also to make himself a typical South Carolina litterateur by editing such magazines as The Southern Quarterly Review (1856–57) and The Southern and Western Monthly Magazine (1845), writing a History (1840) and a Geography (1843) of the state, and biographies of Francis Marion (1844), John Smith (1846), the Chevalier Bayard (1847), and Nathaniel Greene (1849), as well as delivering orations and writing essays, which began with the academic championing of slavery and in time became bitter denunciations of Northern attacks.

His blind adoration of local economic, political, and social standards is considered to have damaged the innate realism of his novels. The leading characters are generally more aristocratic than vital, and it is only in the secondary figures, the low‐life characters, among whom is included his Falstaffian creation, Captain Porgy, that he presents fully rounded figures. Because of his two great topics, the frontier and the Revolution, he is invariably called a Southern Cooper, and he does resemble the New York novelist in his themes, fluent romantic style, use of stock figures, and melodramatic plots. Though he fails to attain the poetic quality of Cooper's depictions of nature, he seldom betrays such obvious faults as those of the Northerner. If he did not create a character comparable to Natty Bumppo, or a series comparable to the Leather‐Stocking Tales, he was in general a more accurate delineator of life. Simms's Letters were collected in 5 volumes (1952–56), and a scholarly edition of his works, projected for 15 volumes, began publication in 1969. He appears as a character in DuBose Heyward's Peter Ashley (1932).

William Gilmore Simms

American author William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), the dominant literary personality of the antebellum South, is chiefly remembered for his novels on subjects derived from American history.

William Gilmore Simms was born in Charleston, S.C. His father, "unfortunate in business," moved west; his mother died when he was an infant. He was raised by his maternal grandmother. His education was poor, but he read widely, then studied law. He visited his father in Mississippi, absorbing local color he used later in his books.

Returning to Charleston, in 1826 Simms married and was admitted to the bar a year later. A successful lawyer, by 1830 he had published five books of verse and assisted in editing several literary magazines. By 1832, after his wife's death, he was fully committed to a literary career.

Simms went north, establishing contacts with publishers and making important literary friends. His annual visit north (until the Civil War) to see his books through the press, his prodigious output, and his personality made him one of the most influential figures in American letters. Before sectional controversy eroded his popularity in the North, Simms was second only to James Fenimore Cooper as a popular novelist.

Simms began his literary career an ardent nationalist and Unionist, but he became an advocate of Southern causes in the 1840s and eventually a secessionist, and his writing increasingly turned to Southern material. His achievement was his historical romances. Guy Rivers (1834) is set in northern Georgia, then a frontier. The Yemassee (1835), his most popular colonial novel, deals with an Indian uprising in 1715. The Partisan (1835) was the first of a sequence of seven Revolutionary War novels which ends with Eutaw (1856). This series includes Woodcraft (1852), his best book, notable for Captain Porgy, an earthy character who contrasts with the aristocratic heroes of the series.

In 1836 Simms married Chevillette Roach, daughter of a wealthy landowner, and thereafter was master of a South Carolina plantation. During the Civil War, Simm's plantation with its extensive library was burned by Union soldiers, leaving him impoverished. He wrote doggedly but with little success and died much honored in his native state but little regarded elsewhere.

Further Reading

A primary source is the Letters of William Gilmore Simms, edited by Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Alfred T. Odell, and T.C. Duncan Eaves (5 vols., 1952-1956). Two biographies of Simms, neither entirely satisfactory, are Joseph V. Ridgely, William Gilmore Simms (1962), and William P. Trent, William Gilmore Simms (1895), the latter more complete. The best brief criticism of Simms is in Jay B. Hubbell, The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 (1954), which includes a bibliography. Vernon L. Parrington's chapter on Simms in his Main Currents in American Thought (1927) seriously argues that Simms's artistic growth was stunted by patrician Charleston. A chapter in William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (1961), places Simms in the context of Southern literary culture and society. See also A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature, edited by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (1969).

Additional Sources

Guilds, John Caldwell, Simms: a literary life, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992.

Trent, William Peterfield, William Gilmore Simms, Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1892. □

William Gilmore Simms 1806–70, American novelist, b. Charleston, S.C. He wrote prolifically, both prose and poetry, but it is for his historical romances about his own state that he is remembered and often compared with James Fenimore Cooper . His tales of the Southern frontier include Guy Rivers (1834) and Beauchampe (1842; one part rewritten as Charlemont, 1856); those of colonial times are The Yemassee (1835) and The Cassique of Kiawah (1859); romances of Revolutionary times include a series— The Partisan (1835), Mellichampe (1836), and Katharine Walton (1851)—and The Forayers (1855) and its sequel, Eutaw (1856). He also wrote less successful novels of Spanish history. Besides continually writing fiction, he edited (1849–56) the Southern Quarterly Review and wrote local history and biographies of Francis Marion (1844), Nathanael Greene (1849), and others. His volumes of short stories are entitled Carl Werner (1838) and The Wigwam and the Cabin (two series, both 1845). His home and fortune were destroyed in the Civil War.

Bibliography: See biographies by W. P. Trent (1899, repr. 1968) and J. Guilds (1988); studies by J. Kibler, Jr. (1979) and M. A. Wimsatt (1989).