William Gilmore Simms
William
Gilmore Simms, (b. April 17, 1806,
Charleston, S.C., U.S.—d. June 11, 1870,
Charleston), outstanding Southern
novelist.
Motherless at two, Simms was reared by
his grandmother while his father fought
in the Creek wars and under Jackson at
New Orleans in 1814. Simms lived a
vicariously adventurous childhood
through his father, while absorbing
history through his storytelling
grandmother who had lived through the
Revolution. After attending public
schools for four years, when he entered
the College of Charleston at 10, he knew
enough French, Latin, German, and
Spanish to dabble in translations. At 12
he completed the study of materia
medica, and left college to become a
druggist’s apprentice. He began
publishing poetry in Charleston papers
at 16. Soon thereafter he joined his
itinerant father in the Mississippi
frontier country, meeting the people and
seeing the life of which he later wrote.
He edited a magazine and published a
volume of poetry at 19, married at 20,
and was admitted to the bar at 21.
Simms
was a prodigious worker, whether at
Woodlands Plantation in winter,
Charleston in summer, or on yearly
publishing trips north. As state
legislator and magazine and newspaper
editor, he became embroiled in political
and literary quarrels. From Charleston
and the South he nevertheless received
lifelong praise approaching adulation;
from the North, wide audience and
eminent literary friendships despite his
strong defense of slavery. Though his
life was shadowed by defeat of the
Confederacy, the death of his second
wife, poverty, and the destruction of
his home and library during the passage
of Sherman’s army, his letters attest a
figure long underestimated by literary
historians. Although not born into the
social and literary circles of
Charleston, he was eventually made a
member of the city’s most select group,
the St. Cecilia Society.
Simms
has been criticized for writing too
much, too carelessly, and with too
frequent use of stock devices; he was at
his best the master of a racy and
masculine English prose style and in
dealing humorously with rowdy frontier
characters. His gift as a teller of
tales in the oral tradition and the
antiquarian care he took in preparing
historical materials are dominant
features of such works as Pelayo (1838),
in an 8th-century setting; Vasconselos
(1853), 16th century; The Yemassee
(1835; his most successful work in
audience appeal), colonial; the
revolutionary series—The Partisan
(1835), Mellichampe (1836), The Kinsmen
(1841), Katherine Walton (1851),
Woodcraft (1854), The Forayers (1855),
Eutaw (1856), Joscelyn (1867); his best
border romances—Richard Hurdis (1838)
and Border Beagles (1840); his
short-story collection The Wigwam and
the Cabin (1845); and his History of
South Carolina (1840). Of 19 volumes of
poetry, the collected Poems (1853)
deserve mention. Most popular of his
biographies were The Life of Francis
Marion (1844) and The Life of Chevalier
Bayard (1847). His literary criticism is
represented in Views and Reviews of
American Literature (1845).
