 | |  |
Notes
Mary C. Simms Oliphant, et al., eds. The Letters of William Gilmore Simms (1952), I, lxv. (Only the initial volume was discovered.)
Guy A. Cardwell, "Charleston Periodicals, 1795-1860" (University of North Carolina Ph. D. Dissertation, 1936), p. 212; William Stanley Hoole, "Simms's Career as Editor," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 19 (March 1935), 48n. See also, Hoole, A Check-List and Finding-List of Charleston Periodicals, 1732-1864 (1936), pp. 27-28.
Alexander Salley of Columbia, South Carolina, acquired this small leather-bound volume in 1940. It is now part of the Salley Collection of the Works of William Gilmore Simms at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
John C. Guilds, Jr., "Simms's First Magazine: The Album," Studies in Bibliography, 8 (1956), 169-183.
Number 27 was to appear around 31 December 1825 as a title page and index for those subscribers who wanted to bind their weekly issues, but is not bound with the one extant copy.
The unique copy of Volume I was cropped for binding. It measures 8 ⅛ x 5 1/16 inches. The issues of Volume II measure 8 ½ x 5 ¼ inches but appear also to have been bound at one time.
For Simms's editing of this periodical, see John C. Guilds, Jr., "William Gilmore Simms and the Southern Literary Gazette," Studies in Bibliography, 21 (1968), 59-62, and "The 'Lost' Number of the Southern Literary Gazette," Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1969), 266-273.
Guilds, "Simms's First Magazine," pp. 171, 181. It is understandable that one might reach this conclusion in light of Simms's later editorial practice, but The Album proves to be the exception to the rule.
Guilds is correct in deducing that "Juan," "Roderick," and "W. A." are one and the same, but errs in believing them to be Simms. See "Simms's First Magazine," p. 183.
See The Album, I, 138, and II, 76. The second reference states that it is the "determination of the Publishers and Editors" to stimulate original local literary production.
W. G. S., "Letters from the West" (4 March 1826), pp. 68-69; (11 March 1826), pp. 76-77; (1 April 1826), pp. 100-101; (20 May 1826), pp. 157-158. Any doubt that "W. G. S." may not be Simms is put to rest by the poem sent back with Letter I. "Song" (Calm o'er the wave . . .) was collected the following year in Simms's Lyrical and Other Poems (Charleston: Ellis & Neufville, 1827), pp. 13-14.
Hampton Jarrell, "Simms's Visits to the Southwest," American Literature, 5 (1933), 29-35; William Stanley Hoole, "A Note on Simms's Visits to the Southwest," American Literature, 6 (1934), 334-336; and Hoole, "Alabama and W. Gilmore Simms," Alabama Review, 16 (1963), 83-107, and 185-199.
On the 1824-1825 trip, William Hoole ("Alabama and W. Gilmore Simms," p. 87) reports that Simms returned "directly" home to Charleston by going from Columbus, Mississippi, eastward to the Warrior River, then down that stream to Mobile, and thence to Charleston. Getting to the Southwest on this trip, he travelled from Charleston "by stagecoach through Augusta to Milledgeville and Fort Mitchell to Montgomery, then down the Alabama River to Selma and Mobile and up the Tombigbee to Demopolis and up the Black Warrior to Tuscaloosa. The last 160 miles westward from Tuscaloosa to Georgeville [Mississippi] he made overland, via Columbus, Louisville and Kosciusko (Mississippi)." In 1831, he used this same 1824 route to Mobile, where he this time took a stage to Pascagoula and from there a steamboat to New Orleans. From New Orleans, he crossed Lake Pontchartrain, rode to Covington, Louisiana, and thence to Columbia, Mississippi. From Columbia, he took a long "hazardous" journey on horseback into the Yazoo region and to Georgeville. See Letters, I, 10-38 for details and descriptions of his travels. It appears likely from a comparison of these routes that Simms was consciously varying his itineraries in order to see more of the country and thus to gather a greater store of material for future literary use.
In one such account, he noted attending in Mobile "the trial of a set of Gamblers." To young lawyers of Charleston who cannot find enough business at home, he noted "a fair field open" owing to the "extreme" inferiority of the Bar. The fact that Simms himself would be admitted to the Charleston Bar the following year is of significance in this light.
Guy Rivers (1834), Richard Hurdis (1838), Border Beagles (1840), Confession (1841), and Beauchampe (1842).
"How Sharp Snaffles Got His Capital and Wife" in Writings of William Gilmore Simms, 5 (1974), 421-465.
See James Kibler, "Simms' Indebtedness to Folk Tradition in 'Sharp Snaffles,'" Southern Literary Journal, 4 (Spring 1972), 55-68.
Hoole in "Alabama and W. Gilmore Simms," p. 198, incorrectly refers to this poem as being written in 1868. Though published that year, its genesis came forty years earlier in The Album, as the newly-discovered volume reveals.
Unrecorded in James E. Kibler, Jr., The Poetry of William Gilmore Simms: An Introduction and Bibliography (1979).
The Album texts are reprinted with three emendations; In "Song," line 18, by by has been changed to by. In "The Blighted Tree," line 24 Painting is revised to Panting, and line 31 alreads becomes already.
Only issues 4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 17, 20, and 25 are extant. For proof of the following Simms pseudonyms, see James E. Kibler, Jr., The Pseudonymous Publications of William Gilmore Simms (1976). The format is based on Guilds's "Simms's First Magazine," in order to make possible conflation of the two lists so as to provide a complete record of Simms's contribution to the extant issues of The Album.
| | |