William Gilmore Simms

Delivered as a three-part lecture series in 1854 at the famous Hibernian Society Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, Simm's spirited defense of poetry stands in the noble line of poetic credos from poets such as Sir Philip Sidney and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is the only full-length work of its kind in American literature, and it has never before been published. Seventh in the University of Arkansas Press's Simms Series, Poetry and the Practical is a clear, forceful rebuttal of arguments that would relegate poetry to the margins of life. It proclaims the high calling of poets as spokesmen and romantic visionaries, underscoring their mission to reveal truth and passion, mind and heart and to transcend the limiting bounds of the empirical. In proving poetry's utility and worth, Simms uses all the tools of persuasion open to him: his wide reading, his considerable knowledge of the history of culture and civilizations, his understanding of the values of place and tradition, and, above all, an oratorical eloquence, which allows his words to leave the page in a rush of inspiration. These lectures, which still retain their identity as scripts prepared and punctuated for performance, provide profound insight into Simms the poet and into the effects of industrialization, the southern sensibility, and the influence of European thought on southern literature at a critical point in that literature's development.

William Gilmore Simms - a nineteenth century American writer whose popularity once surpassed that of Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville received his greatest acclaim for such widely read novels as Guy Rivers, The Yemassee, and The Partisan. He also penned an assortment of short stories that, though less well known than his novels, are now regarded by an expanding circle of critics as his most impressive body of work. With Tales of the South, Mary Ann Wimsatt assembles a representative sampling of Simms's short fiction and restores these classic tales to their rightful place in America's literary canon. Deftly combining homespun realism with impressive flights of fantasy, these fourteen stories offer intimate views of nineteenth century work and domesticity while exploring the legends, superstitions, and folk experiences that circulated through all classes and races of antebellum society. Simms's sprightly, highly imaginative tales reflect his ties to British and American romanticism, his genius for tall-tale humor, and his keen interest in Native American culture. In introducing the stories, Wimsatt explores the various contexts - biographical, historical, economic, and literary - from which Simms's short fiction emerged. Beginning with his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, she chronicles the events that shaped his writing and charts the changing literary fashions that have influenced critical responses to his work from the postbellum era until the late twentieth century. Wimsatt contends that, until recently, Simms's literary achievements have been eclipsed by his proslavery, secessionist stance, by ignorance of his principal genres, and by a general misunderstanding of Southern culture and literature. With Tales of the South, Wimsatt rescues the short stories of this major American writer from contemporary obscurity and assesses the current resurgence of interest in Simms and his literary achievements.