SIMMS, WILLIAM GILMORE American poet, novelist, dramatist and historian, was born at Charleston, S. C., April 17, 1806. His mother died in his infancy; his father, having failed in business, embarked on a series of wanderings on the border, fighting Indians and finally settling on a plantation in Mississippi. To the father's tales of wild adventure and the son's observation of frontier types on a visit to the West must be attributed some of the best features of Simms's border ro mances. In general, however, his life and work were shaped by the fact that he made his home in Charleston, where his grand mother had reared him. First an apprentice to a druggist, then a lawyer and an editor, largely self-educated, he received little recognition from the aristocrats of that city, in spite of his life long devotion to the literature of the South. He gave advice and financial help to the literary aspirants who besieged him; he con tributed with little or no remuneration reams of material to thefeeble southern papers and magazines, six of which he founded and conducted ; but he was compelled to go to the North, where he sold the serial and book rights of most of his tales, to obtain the money and fame his own city denied him. He served in the South Carolina legislature, but lost by one vote the post of lieu tenant governor. His later life was shadowed by poverty, by the burning of his home and library during the Civil War, by the defeat of the secessionist cause which he had supported and by the death of his second wife and several beloved children. Never theless, he remained a gallant figure, writing unceasingly until the break-down that came before his death at Charleston June i i, 187o.
Of his literary output Simms's novels are most important, ranking him next to Cooper in the depiction of frontier life. His novel of the Indians, The Yemassee (1835) his Revolutionary series, including The Partisan (1835), Mellichampe (1836), Katherine Walton (1851), The Sword and the Distaff (1852 ; published later as Woodcraft) , The Forayers (1855), and Eutaw (1856) ; and his tale of the outlaws of the West, Border Beagles (184o), are particularly to be commended. Beau
champe (1842) and Charlemont (1856), both based on a famous Kentucky murder used by Poe and other writers, are also of interest. As a novelist Simms's greatest weaknesses were his carelessness in technique, due to hasty composition, and his excessive use of the hor rible; his chief sources of strength were his inventiveness, his vivid des-. criptive powers, and his bold characterization of eccentric border types. He prepared the materials for his historical romances with the care of an antiquarian and he realized the value of fiction for social history— a fact that is brought out in the best of his collections of short stories, The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845-46 ; published in Aberdeen as Life in America, 1858). His poems, largely of a sentimental, dreamy type, were published in two volumes in 1853, after being issued in various minor compilations. Simms's scholastic deficiencies, which he himself felt keenly, prevented his Supplement to the Plays of William Shakespeare (1848) from being of value save as a revelation of his tastes. His History of South Carolina (184o; many times republished, and still used in the public schools of the State), his other works devoted to South Carolina, and his edition of the War Poetry of the South (1867) reveal his loyalty to his section. Of his biographies the best probably are the lives of the Chevalier Bayard (1847) and Captain John Smith (1846), although the Life of Francis Marion (1844) appeared in the greatest number of editions. A revised edition of his more important works appeared in ten volumes in 1882.
W. P. Trent's William Gilmore Simms (1892) is an admirable biography. See also 0. Wegelin's List of the Separate Writings of William Gilmore Simms (1906) and John Erskine's Leading American Novelists (1910).