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.
It features such characters as Hell-fire Dick, a hardhearted, foul-mouthed looter under Tory protection. Simms hoped his readers would find this book "a bold, brave, masculine story; frank, ardent, vigorous; faithful to humanity.
" Molly Boyd notes in Studies in the Novel (Summer 2003): "Castle Dismal contains two narrative strands, the frame story of Frank Ashley, Ned Clifton, and their Christmas celebrations, and an internal ghost story in which Ned Clifton ...
First published in 1844, The Life of Francis Marion was Simms's most commercially successful work of nonfiction. It offers a treatment of Marion's life that is unparalleled in its scope and accuracy, all in Simms's inimitable style.
The Simms Reader presents a selection of his nonnovelistic work--letters, short fiction, essays, historical writings, poetry, and epigrams--chosen and introduced by the preeminent Simms scholar John Caldwell Guilds.