Refined by:
- Publication date: 1850s (x)
- Creator: Anonymous [William Gilmore Simms] (x)
- Places of publication: New York, NY (x)
- Genre
- Novel (Romance) (7)
- Novella (2)
- Poetry (1)
- Short Stories (2)
- Travel Writings (1)
- Subject heading
- American Poetry -- 19th Century (1)
- Beaufort (S.C.) -- Fiction (1)
- Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction (2)
- Frontier and pioneer life -- South Carolina -- Fiction. (1)
- Georgia -- Fiction (1)
- Ghost stories, American (1)
- Historical fiction. (1)
- Indians of North America -- Fiction. (1)
- Indians of North America -- South Carolina -- Fiction. (1)
- Pelayo, King of Asturias, d. 737 (1)
- South Carolina -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction (1)
- South Carolina -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction. (2)
- Spain -- History -- Gothic period, 414-711 -- Fiction. (1)
- United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction (2)
- Yamassee Indians -- Fiction (1)
- Time period
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Atalantis. A Story of the Sea: In Three Parts.Poetry | J. & J. Harper | 1832
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 ... |
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Carl Werner, An Imaginative Story; with Other Tales of ImaginationShort Stories | George Adlard | 1838 Carl Werner was published in December 1838 by George Adlard of New
York.[1] In the author’s advertisement, Simms classified
the collected stories as “moral imaginative” tales, a form of allegory
illuminating the “strifes between the rival moral principles of good and evil.”
Such stories, according to John C. Guilds,
may often exploit supernatural elements, although it is not necessary. Simms attributed the origin of the title
story to “an ancient monkish legend,” as he set “Carl Werner” in the deepest parts
of the German forest where the narrator and his friend ... |
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Castle Dismal; or, The Bachelor's ChristmasNovella | Burgess, Stringer & Co. | 1844 A gothic tale of ghosts, infidelity,
murder, and love, Castle Dismal follows
the protagonist Ned Clifton, a “veteran bachelor” who fears the bonds of
marriage, in his holiday visit to the home of married friends. Set during the Christmas season in South Carolina,
Simms’s story illustrates the southern custom of bringing together family
around a table to feast; and while Clifton eventually marries Elizabeth
Singleton—freeing him from the “melancholy dependencies of bachelorism”—Simms
subverts naïve nineteenth-century notions of marriage and domesticity.[1] Marked ... |
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Charleston: The Palmetto City. An EssayTravel Writings | Harper & Brothers; Southern Studies Program, University of South Carolina | 1857, 1976 Charleston: The Palmetto City is a 1976 pamphlet republication of
an essay of the same name, originally published anonymously by Simms in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in June
1857.[1] The pamphlet edition of this essay is a
facsimile of the original Harper’s
piece. In the essay, a rare example of
the author’s travel writing, Simms focused on the architecture and geography of
his native city, descriptions that are complimented by detailed illustrations
of many of the most significant of Charleston’s buildings and memorials.[2] While a minor work, the essay ... |
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Confession; or, The Blind Heart. A Domestic Story.Novel (Romance) | Lea and Blanchard | 1841 Building
out of his early experiences with writing in the psychological gothic mode in
such texts as Martin Faber (1833) and
Carl Werner (1838) and anticipating
his later work Castle Dismal (1844), William
Gilmore Simms published Confesssion; or, The Blind Heart in 1841. Coming at the front of what many consider to
be the author’s most productive period, this novel is the extended confession
of Edward Clifford who is orphaned at a young age and sent to be reared by his
aunt and uncle in Charleston. Rising
above his foster parents’ scorn, Clifford becomes a lawyer, a prominent
citizen, ... |
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Count Julian; or, The Last Days of the GothNovel (Romance) | William Taylor & Co. | 1845 - 1846 While generally considered to be
one of Simms’s weakest novels, Count
Julian; or, the Last Days of the Goth provides one of the most intriguing
textual histories of any of the author’s numerous works. Conceived as a sequel to Simms’s 1838 novel Pelayo, Count Julian continues Simms’s fictional treatment of Medieval
Spain, dramatizing the legendary betrayal of Julian, Count of Cueta, an act that
helped lead to the Muslim conquest of Iberia.
The work suffered from multiple delays in both composition and publication
and was not published until 1845 or 1846, more ... |
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Guy Rivers: A Tale of GeorgiaNovel (Romance) | Harper & Brothers | 1834 Guy Rivers was published by Harper & Brothers in July 1834 as the
first of Simms’s many fictional frontier writings known as the Border Romance
series. According to the author, these works were “meant to illustrate the
border & domestic history of the South.”[1] Writing to James Lawson in December
1833, Simms described the novel as “a tale of Georgia—a tale of the miners—of a
frontier and wild people, and the events are precisely such as may occur among
a people & in a region of that character.”[2] Mary Ann Wimsatt notes that Guy
Rivers established ... |
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Martin Faber and Other TalesShort Stories | Harper & Brothers | 1837 One of the most important works
in Simms’s development as a writer, Martin
Faber has a long and intriguing publication history. Originally published as a novella by J. &
J. Harper of New York in 1833, it was revised and expanded for re-publication,
alongside nine other short stories and a poem, as Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, and Other Tales, issued by
Harper & Brothers in 1837.[1] Simms biographer John Caldwell Guilds notes
the significance of Martin Faber for the
author, as its writing and Simms’s hopes for it, seemed to seriously alter his
life in his late ... |
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Martin Faber: The Story of a CriminalNovella | J. & J. Harper | 1833 One of the most important works
in Simms’s development as a writer, Martin
Faber has a long and intriguing publication history. Originally published as a novella by J. &
J. Harper of New York in 1833, it was revised and expanded for re-publication,
alongside nine other short stories and a poem, as Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, and Other Tales, issued by
Harper & Brothers in 1837.[1] Simms biographer John Caldwell Guilds notes
the significance of Martin Faber for the
author, as its writing and Simms’s hopes for it, seemed to seriously alter his
life in his late ... |
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Mellichampe: A Legend of the SanteeNovel (Romance) | Harper & Brothers | 1836 The second of eight novels in the Revolutionary War series,
William Gilmore Simms’s Mellichampe was originally published
by Harper in 1836, then revised and republished in the Redfield edition in
1854. The story follows the fictional band of Francis Marion’s partisans
in the fall of 1780 after the Battle of Camden, as they engage in guerrilla
warfare on the Santee River against loyalist and British forces. In his
advertisement to the first edition, Simms considered Mellichampe a
“Historical romance” that accurately conveyed the career of Marion[1] to the “very ... |
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Pelayo: A Story of the GothNovel (Romance) | Harper & Brothers | 1838 By the late 1830s, Simms’s
reputation and fame were on a steady rise; on the
strength of romances like The Yemassee and
The Partisan, Simms was widely
regarded as one of antebellum America’s finest writers. At this point, the always self-conscious
novelist made one of the more curious decisions of his literary career by
reworking a piece of verse-drama juvenilia into the novel Pelayo: A Story of the Goth,
published in two volumes by Harper & Brothers of New York in 1838. In writing Pelayo, Simms left the romantic epics of America’s history and
frontier on which ... |
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The Partisan: A Tale of the RevolutionNovel (Romance) | Harper & Brothers | 1835
The Partisan: A Tale of the Revolution (1835) was the first composed of Simms’s
series of romances about the Revolutionary War, though the second in the
series’ overall chronology. The Partisan was also the
first of a “trilogy” of closely-related novels within Simms’s overall
Revolutionary War saga, sharing characters and other links with Mellichampe (1836)
and Katherine Walton (1851).[1] The
novel deals with the 1780 Battle of Camden and its aftermath, especially the
guerilla warfare tactics employed by “The Swamp Fox,” General Francis Marion,
and other ... |
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The Yemassee. A Romance of Carolina.Novel (Romance) | Harper & Brothers | 1835 The Yemassee is historically the best known of
the long fictions of William Gilmore Simms.
Set on the South Carolina frontier, Simms’s third book-length fiction
treats the Yemassee War of 1715-17, when the Yemassee Indians, with their
Spanish and Native American allies, attacked the low country colonial
settlements. Writing in the midst of the
removal of natives from east of the Mississippi to the newly created Indian
Territory in the future Oklahoma, Simms emphasized such motives for the war as
the colonists’ need for land, the conflict between rival European powers ... |