Writer, born in Charleston, North Carolina, USA. After a precocious childhood, he edited a magazine and published a volume of poetry at 19, and was admitted to the bar aged 21. Best known for his historical novels, his most popular work was The Yemassee (1835). His revolutionary series (183567) started with The Partisan, and he also published short stories, poetry, biographies, and criticism. He was an apologist for slavery and the South.
William Gilmore Simms (April 17, 1806 – June, 1870) was a southern American poet, novelist and historian whose novels achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. In recent decades, though, Simms' novels have fallen out of favor.
Simms' Life
Simms was born in Charleston, South Carolina of Scottish-Irish ancestors.
Simms' Early Writings
At the age of eight he first wrote poetry, and in his 19th year he produced a Monody on Gen. Simms then devoted his attention entirely to writing and in rapid succession published Tile Vision of Cones, Cain, and Other Poems (1829), The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris (1830), and his strongest poem, Atlantis, a story of the sea (1832). His short novel, Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, was published in 1833 and made Simms known to a national audience.
Simms Popular Novels about the South
Simms wrote a number of popular novels during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, usually focusing on the pre-colonial and colonial periods of Southern history.
Simms also wrote eight novels set in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War, beginning with The Partisan (1835) and Katherine Walton (1851). Finally, Simms wrote ten novels dealing with the expansion into the frontier territory from Georgia to Louisiana, such as Richard Hurdis;
By the mid 1840s, Simms' fame for his novels was so great that Edgar Allan Poe declared Simms to be, "The best novelist which this country has, on the whole, produced." However, despite having achieved a very good literary reputation during his lifetime, today Simms' novels are, for the most part, out of print.
Simms as Historian
Simms was one of the best, and most respected, historians of his day.
Simms' Pro-Slavery Writings
Today Simms is most known for his pro-slavery or Anti-Tom novel The Sword and the Distaff. The novel was written in response to the 1852 publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist novel focusing on the evils of slavery.
Even though The Sword and the Distaff came out only a few months after Stowe's novel, it contains a number of sections and discussions that are clearly debating Stowe's book and view of slavery. The novel focuses on the Revolutionary War and its aftermath through the lives of Captain Porgy and one of his slaves.
Simms' book was one of between twenty or thirty Anti-Tom novels written after Stowe's book. As in Simms' book, these Anti-Tom novels tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over child-like slaves in a benevolent extended-family-style plantation. Simms' novel was popular enough that it was reprinted in 1854 under the title Woodcraft.
To counter this type of fiction, a number of former slaves such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass wrote slave narratives, which painted a much harsher version of plantation life.
Simms' Final Years
In Simms' later years, he became part of the southern plantation class and firmly supported slavery and southern secession.
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