William Gilmore Simms published Atalantis.  A Story of the Sea: In Three Parts in the fall of 1832.  While Simms’s name does not appear anywhere on or in the text, it is unlikely that he sought any type of anonymity in its publication.  Within weeks of its appearing in print a reviewer in the Charleston Courier announced, “It is attributed to the pen of our fellow-townsman, William Gilmore Simms, Esq.…”[1]  Even without such prompting anyone familiar with Simms’s work would have quickly recognized his authorship, because the opening sonnet was one that he had previously ...

            Published in 1846 by John Russell in Charleston, SC, Areytos was also titled Songs of the South, because all the poems dealt with subject matter related to the southern United States.  Many had been published previously in various periodicals.[1] Simms issued this collection on the heels of his Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies. A Collection of Sonnets.[2]  Thinking of himself primarily as a poet and wanting to secure his place as one of America’s best, he followed the publications of Grouped Thoughts (1845) and Areytos (1846) with five other volumes of poetry, all published ...

           In his study of the role of guerilla warfare in the Civil War, historian Daniel E. Sutherland observes that Southern authors, including William Gilmore Simms, played a significant role in promoting and advancing guerilla tactics as both a patriotic duty and a means of achieving victory; Sutherland notes that Simms had explicitly “promoted and sanctified partisan warfare.”[1]  While the author’s works about Revolutionary War figures like Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion were certainly repurposed and newly understood in the context of the Civil War, Simms wrote new poetry ...