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Early LaysPoetry | A.E. Miller | 1827
The
year 1827 was an eventful one for William Gilmore Simms. He completed reading law in the office of boyhood friend Charles Rivers Carroll and was appointed as a magistrate for Charleston; his
first child, Anna Augusta Singleton, was born, and he published two volumes of
collected poetry.[1] Early
Lays was the second
of those volumes and it was published by A.E. Miller of Charleston in the fall
of 1827.[2] In his dedication Simms noted, however, that
the material in Early
Lays was
“principally compiled from a surplus quantity of matter left from the
publication ... |
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Lyrical and Other PoemsPoetry | Ellis & Neufville | 1827
The
Charleston firm of Ellis & Neufville issued Lyrical
and Other Poems, which was Simms’s first published collection of poetry,
in January or early February of 1827. An
early date is most likely, because the copyright notice reprinted at the front
of the text indicates that Ellis & Neufville filed the necessary paperwork
on December 13, 1826, and a review of the volume appeared in the New York Literary Gazette
and American Athenæum on February 3, 1827. The collection was generally well-received by
critics and in later years Simms would recall fondly the praise ... |
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The History of South Carolina, From Its First European Discovery to Its Erection into a RepublicHistory | S. Babcock & Co. | 1840 Believing it
“necessary to the public man, as to the pupil,” Simms undertook The History of South Carolina explicitly
for the education of the state’s young people, so as to tell them the vibrant
history of the state and the distinguished accomplishments of her leaders.[1] There
is evidence to suggest that Simms was particularly motivated to write such a
history in order to provide an historical account of South Carolina and notable
South Carolinians, to his eldest child Augusta, who was attending boarding
school in Massachusetts in the late 1830s.[2] Simms seemingly ... |
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The Sword and the Distaff; or, "Fair, Fat and Forty," A Story of the South, at the Close of RevolutionNovel (Romance) | Walker, Richards & Co. | 1852 Written in the “midst of one of the
most productive creative surges in his career,”[1]
Woodcraft; or, Hawks About the Dovecote:
A Story of the South at the Close of the Revolution makes the most serious
and sustained claim as Simms’s masterpiece in the novel form.[2] The fifth novel composed in Simms’s saga of
the American Revolution, it is set during the chaotic close and aftermath of
the war. This makes it the last (eighth)
Revolutionary Romance in terms of chronological action. As the work opens, the
British are evacuating Charleston in December 1782. Then the novel shifts ... |
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The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems.Poetry | James S. Burges, 44 Queen Street | 1829
The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems, Simms's fourth separate
publication, was issued in the summer of
1829. Like his three previous works,
it is a volume of poetry. Comprised primarily of the three long poems “The Vision of Cortes,” “Cain,” and “Ashley River,” the volume also contains a number of shorter works, some of which had been previously published in other venues. The subject
matter of the volume ranges widely, moving from the title poem, which recalls in verse the 1518
expedition of Hernán
Cortés into Mexico,
to an ode to South Carolina’s ... |