Simms, WILLIAM GILMORE

Simms, WILLIAM GILMORE, American author, born at Charleston, South Carolina, April 17, 1806, at first was placed with a druggist there, but at eighteen began the study of law, though he scarcely practised. His earliest volume, Lyric and other Poems, was published in 1827. In 1828 he became editor of the City Gazette, which opposed nullification and died in 1833. Meanwhile he had published The Vision of Cortes (1829); The Tri-colour (1830); and in 1832 Atalantis, a Story of the Sea. From this time he poured out rather than wrote poems (perhaps the best Southern Passages and Pictures, 1839), novels (among them The Yemassee, The Partisan, and Bauchamp), histories, and biographies in rapid succession, almost till his death, on 11th June 1870. His style is crude but vigorous, and his writings display strong imagination and many of the gifts of the born story-teller. An illustrated edition of his works in 17 vols. appeared at New York in 1882–86. There are Lives by Cable (1888) and Professor W. P. Trent (in ‘American Men of Letters’ series).