SIMMS, WILLIAM GILMORE (1806-70). An American novelist, born at Charleston, S. C. lle was admitted to the bar in 1827, and in the same year published two volumes of poems, Early Lays and Lyrical and Other Poems. In 1828 he became editor of the Charleston City Gazette, the Union proclivities of which lost him money and almost brought him physical ill treatment during the Nullification excitement. Having left Charleston temporarily in 1832, Simms resided for some months at Hingham, Mass., where he wrote his longest poem, A talon tis, a Story of the Sea (1832). The fairly well known lyric, The Lost Plciad, remains probably his best achievement in verse. But the year after the publication of Atalantis saw him enter upon his true vocation. His Martin Faber, although in some respects a crude, sensational novel, was full of a genuine narrative power. In 1834 he published Guy Rivers, a tale of the gold fever in Georgia, the first of a series of border romances, including Richard Hurdis (1838), Border Bea gles (1840), Beauchampe (1842), etc.. full of the crime and excitement that filled the South west iu those years and valuable as pic tures of local conditions. Guy Rivers was fol lowed, however, by a story which showed Simms more profitable lines along which to walk as a disciple of Cooper. This was his Yemassec (1835), a tale of Indian warfare in colonial Carolina. This is by many regarded as his best work, though perhaps equaled in power and in terest by some of the series of Revolutionary romances which began, in the same year. with The Parisdan and was continued with Melli ehampc (1830); The Kinsmen (1341), which was afterwards (1854) published as The Scout; Katherine Walton (1851); Woodcraft (1554) ; The Forayers (1855) ; and Eutaw (1856).
These remarkable romances dealing with the partisan warfare of Slam-ion and other track ers of the Carolina swamps, in a manner almost worthy of Cooper, are in the main rele gated to-day to juvenile readers, but display a fund of historical knowledge, of vigorous de scription, and of narrative interest. Simms was the most representative man of letters save Poe produced by the South before the Civil War. He wrote many short. stories, the best of which were collected in two volumes entitled The wam and the Cabin (1845-40). He compiled a history of his native State and several historical monographs. He composed biographies of the Chevalier Bayard, Capt. John Smith, General Marion, and Gen. Nathanael Greene. He edited The Routhern Quarterly Review and compiled the war poetry of the South. He supported thc secession movement heartily and lost heavily during the war. At its close he set to work bravely to repair his fortunes by his pen, but with little success. He was a man of strong personality. For his life and many of his letters, as well as for a bibliography, see the biography by \V. P. Trent, in the "American Alen of Letters Series" (1892). A full bibliography by A. S. Sally, Jr., can be found in the publications of the Southern Historical Association.