Refined by:
- Publication date: 1840s (x)
- Time period: Antebellum Period (x)
- Places of publication: New York, NY (x)
- Genre
- History (1)
- Novel (Romance) (3)
- Novella (3)
- Poetry (2)
- Reviews/Essays (1)
- Short Stories (2)
- Subject heading
- Artist
- F.O.C. Darley (1)
- T.A. Richards (1)
- [F.O.C. Darley] (2)
- Character
- Alfred Stevens (1)
- Carl Werner (1)
- Clement Foster (1)
- Conrade Weickhoff (1)
- Dick Jamison (1)
- Harry Vernon (1)
- Helen Halsey (1)
- Henry Meadors (1)
- Herman Ottfried (1)
- Ipsistos (1)
- John Cross (1)
- Logoochie (1)
- Margaret Cooper (1)
- Matilda Ottfried (1)
- Mowbray (1)
- Ned Hinkley (1)
- Rudolph Steinmyer (1)
- Tom Horsey (1)
- Wat Rawlins (1)
- William Calvert (1)
- William Hinkley (1)
- Creator
- Dedicatee
- Hon. John A. Campbell (1)
- James Hall (1)
- My Daughter (2)
- Professor E. Geddings (1)
- Prosper M. Wetmore (1)
- Randell Hunt, Esq. (1)
- Richard Henry Wilde (1)
- The Youth of South Carolina (1)
- Engraver
- Richardson, SC (1)
- Whitney & Jocelyn SC (1)
- Whtiney & Jocelyn SC (2)
- Printer
- Publisher
- Burgess, Stringer & Co. (2)
- George Adlard (2)
- Harper & Brothers (1)
- J. & J. Harper (2)
- Redfield (4)
- Wiley and Putnam (1)
- Subject
- Anna Cooke (2)
- Cornelius Mathews (1)
- Daniel Boon (1)
- Hernando Cortes (1)
- James Fenimore Cooper (1)
- Jereboam O. Beauchamp (2)
- Major John Andre (1)
- Mason L. Weems (1)
- Solomon P. Sharp (2)
- Stereotyper
- Savage & McCrea (3)
- T.B. Smith (1)
![]() |
Atalantis. A Story of the Sea: In Three Parts.Antebellum Period | 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 ... |
![]() |
Beauchampe; or, The Kentucky TragedyAntebellum Period | Novel (Romance) | Redfield | 1856 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, ... |
![]() |
Border Beagles: A Tale of MississippiAntebellum Period | Novel (Romance) | Redfield | 1855 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 ... |
![]() |
Carl Werner, An Imaginative Story; with Other Tales of ImaginationAntebellum Period | Short 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 ... |
![]() |
Castle Dismal; or, The Bachelor's ChristmasAntebellum Period | Novella | 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 ... |
![]() |
Charlemont; or, The Pride of the VillageAntebellum Period | Novel (Romance) | Redfield | 1856 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, ... |
![]() |
Helen Halsey, or The Swamp State of Conelachita: A Tale of the BordersAntebellum Period | Novella | Burgess, Stringer & Co. | 1845 While one of the lesser-known of
Simms’s border romances, the novella Helen
Halsey is nevertheless a strong work, indicative of the overall project the
author undertook in that series. The
first mention of Helen Halsey in the Letters was in June 1843. By September, Simms told James Lawson that the
work was “nearly ready.” Helen Halsey was “to follow up” Simms’s
ghost story Castle Dismal, a work he
announces in the same letter to be sending to “the Harpers.”[1]
Letters to Lawson from this time period
indicate that the author was interested in shopping ... |
![]() |
Martin Faber and Other TalesAntebellum Period | Short 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 ... |
![]() |
Martin Faber: The Story of a CriminalAntebellum Period | Novella | 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 ... |
![]() |
Southern Passages and PicturesAntebellum Period | Poetry | George Adlard | 1839 Southern Passages and Pictures is a volume of poetry by William
Gilmore Simms, although his name is not mentioned directly on the title page.
The work announced its author simply as the writer of “Atalantis,” “The
Yemassee,” “Guy Rivers,” and “Carl Werner,” perhaps assuming that readers would
know Simms in association with his authorship of these well-read works. The volume was published in December of 1838
by George Adlard, who also published Carl
Werner on Simms’s behalf. Craighead
and Allen were the Printers. Although Southern
Passages and Pictures was published ... |
![]() |
The History of South Carolina, from its First European Discovery to its Erection into a RepublicAntebellum Period | History | Redfield | 1860 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 ... |
![]() |
Views and Reviews in American Literature, History and FictionAntebellum Period | Reviews/Essays | Wiley and Putnam | 1845 - 1846 Part of the Wiley and Putnam’s highly influential Library of American
Books, Simms’s two-volume Views and
Reviews in American Literature, History and Fiction, shows the author
theorizing the “American” aspects of American literature, as well as the
relationship between America’s history and its imaginative writing. In this, we can see Simms presenting and
promoting the cultural agenda of the “Young America” movement, whose members
included Melville, Poe, and Hawthorne. Views and Reviews is thus a central text
in understanding the struggle for defining American literature ... |