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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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Atalantis; A Story of the Sea.Poetry | Carey and Hart | 1849
Though the first edition of Atalantis.
A Story of the Sea (1832) was well received by reviewers both North
and South, it had only one printing. The
limited print run of just 500 copies meant that relatively few readers could
enjoy the many “uncommonly strong and vigorous passages” that comprised William
Gilmore Simms’s fanciful tale.[1] Simms was early convinced that a larger
readership existed and that Atalantis offered
him an opportunity to increase his reputation in both the Northern states and
Europe. In 1837 he wrote to James
Lawson, one of his best friends ... |
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Beauchampe; or, The Kentucky Tragedy. A Tale of Passion.Novel (Romance) | Lea and Blanchard | 1842 Early in the
morning of 7 November 1825, in the town of Frankfort, KY, a young lawyer named
Jereboam O. Beauchamp crept to the house of the state attorney general, Solomon
P. Sharp, and stabbed him to death. The
murder was orchestrated to avenge the honor of Anna Cook[1],
Beauchamp’s wife, who as a single woman had been seduced, impregnated, and
abandoned by Sharp[2]. The event was a national sensation
immediately following its discovery and Beauchamp’s capture days later. Following Cook and Beauchamp’s failed joint
suicide attempt and the latter’s subsequent execution, ... |
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Border Beagles: A Tale of MississippiNovel (Romance) | Carey and Hart | 1840 In The Major Fiction of William Gilmore Simms,
Mary Ann Wimsatt argues that Border Beagles, the sequel to the
scandalous Richard Hurdis, shows Simms as continuing to explore the
contentious relationship between the older, civilized tidewater south and the
wild trans-mountain frontier.[1]
While thus continuing a theme begun with Guy Rivers and Richard
Hurdis, Border Beagles saw Simms decidedly scaling back
the violence found in those two books, especially the latter. Here, the
author’s presentation of the chaos and dangers of the frontier is tempered by
humor, with ... |
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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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Flirtation at the Moultrie HouseNovella | 1850 One of
Simms’s minor works, the epistolary novella, Flirtation at the Moultrie House, presents an interesting picture
of society life in mid-century Charleston.
Mary Ann Wimsatt notes that Flirtation,
published as a pamphlet in 1850 by Edward C. Councell of Charleston, shows
Simms’s “growing talent for brisk descriptions of city life,” while Simms
biographer John C. Guilds notes the satiric success of the work: “Not only is Flirtation of interest because it represents a type of fiction
almost wholly different from that characteristically associated with the
prolific ... |
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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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Katharine Walton; or, The Rebel of Dorchester. An Historical Romance of the Revolution in Carolina.Novel (Romance) | A. Hart | 1851 Set in September of 1780, Katharine Walton is
the third installment of a trilogy that follows The Partisan and Mellichampein
covering the Revolution in South Carolina.[1] While The Partisan and Mellichampe are
set in the interior of the Santee and Wateree rivers, Katharine Walton takes
the reader to the city of Charleston in 1780-81 to trace the social world of
South Carolina under British occupation.[2] The city functions narratively as a
“unifying center,” according to John C. Guilds, to free Katharine
Walton of the “awkward shifts in action and setting ... |
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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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Matilda: or, The Spectre of the Castle. An Imaginative Story.Novella | F. Gleason | 1846 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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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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Richard Hurdis; or, The Avenger of Blood. A Tale of Alabama.Novel (Romance) | Carey and Hart | 1838 Richard Hurdis, the second of Simms’s
Border Romances (following Guy Rivers
of 1834), presents an intriguing study of the author’s development, as its
publication history illustrated Simms’s notorious sensitivity to critical
reception. Hurdis came out during a worrisome time in Simms’s life, with his
second wife, Chevillette Eliza Roach Simms, severely ill while pregnant, and
the writer’s relationship with his publisher, the Harper Brothers of New York,
souring. John C. Guilds notes that
“alternating moods of depression and optimism—lifelong traits—soon became
dominant ... |
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The Charleston Book: A Miscellany in Prose and VerseMiscellany | The Reprint Company; Samuel Hart, Sen. | 1845, 1983 One of the major American cities
of the mid-19th century, Charleston was viewed by its citizens as a
hub of culture and erudition equal to that of the other great cities of the
time, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. To illustrate the quality of the city’s
intellectual life and literary merits, “Charleston book-seller and Reform
Jewish leader Samuel Hart, Sr. proposed that Charlestonians join the trend” of
putting together an anthology of writings by city residents, much as several
other cities had done throughout the late 1830s.[1] Simms, the leading ... |
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The Cosmopolitan: An OccasionalMiscellany | Wm. Estill | 1833 Simms was the primary, anonymous
contributor to the Cosmopolitan: An
Occasional, and the two numbers of this short-lived publication reveal the
state of his talents at the end of his apprenticeship period. Issued in May and July 1833 by Wm. Estill of
Charleston, the two issues of the Cosmopolitan
are among the works leading to what John C. Guilds calls Simms’s “flurry of
literary efforts that produced four major works of fiction within the next two
years.”.[1]
As such, Guilds suggests that the
Cosmopolitan be considered not so much for the quality of Simms’s
inconsistent ... |
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The Damsel of DarienNovel (Romance) | Lea and Blanchard | 1839 The Damsel of Darien was published in
two volumes in 1839. Simms first mentioned
the story to James Lawson in a 2 September 1838 letter, revealing that he
“wrote during the first part of the summer some 150 pages of a new novel &
there it sticks.”[1] Simms informed Lawson in January of 1839 that
Damsel would be published with Lea
& Blanchard of Philadelphia, who would pay $1000 for a first edition of
3,000 copies; in the meantime, Simms was busy revising the “numerous errors of
history & geography” committed while composing the first volume of the story.[2] ... |
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The Golden Christmas: A Chronicle of St. John's, BerkeleyNovella | Walker, Richards & Co. | 1852 Published by Walker &
Richards in 1852, The Golden Christmas is
novella of social manners set in the lowcountry of Berkeley County near Charleston, South Carolina. Geography is
of central importance to both the book itself and the story within. Charleston, as the home of the author, the
setting of the story, and the location of the publisher and printer is as much
the focus of the work as any characters or details of plot; in a 2005
introduction to the novella, critic David Aiken claims that The Golden Christmas “today provides one
of the most comprehensive and accurate ... |
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The Kinsmen; or, the Black Riders of Congaree. A Tale.Novel (Romance) | Lea and Blanchard | 1841 William Gilmore Simms’s third novel of the Revolutionary
War (though fifth in order of plot chronology) was originally published in 1841
under the title The Kinsmen. It became an early offering as part of the
Redfield edition under its more popularly-known title The Scout in 1854. A novel
of familial conflict in the context of war and a broad-minded exploration of
patriotism across classes, The Scout
opens shortly after the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill (aka the Second Battle of
Camden)[1] in May 1781. The action ends with the British departure
from the Star Fort at Ninety ... |
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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 Remains of Maynard Davis Richardson with a Memoir of His LifeDocuments | O. A. Roorback | 1833 One of Simms’s most personal
works, The Remains of Maynard Davis
Richardson is an editorial project the writer undertook after his good
friend Richardson’s premature death at the age of 20 on 12 October 1832. While details about their friendship remain scarce,
it is known that Richardson accompanied Simms on the writer’s first trip to the
North,[1]
and Simms dedicated his long 1832 narrative poem Atalantis to him, referring to the younger man’s “high moral and
intellectual worth” in his dedicatory note.
The families of the two men had been long acquainted ... |