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Notes
General Manuscripts Collection, P 1540, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
Recorded in James Kibler, The Pseudonymous Publications of William Gilmore Simms (University of Georgia Press, 1976) and Kibler, The Poetry of William Gilmore Simms: An Introduction and Bibliography (Columbia, S. C.: Southern Studies Program, 1979). The poem signed W****** is "A Lock of Hair" in the Charleston Courier, 22 November 1824.
The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, ed. Mary C. Simms Oliphant, et al. (University of South Carolina Press, 1952-1982), I, 161, 285; II, 221.
His first poem under this pseudonym was "Sonnet—To My Books," Charleston City Gazette (20 March 1823). See also Kibler, Pseudonymous Publications, p. 91.
Previously thought to be 30 April 1825. Simms's first work of fiction was heretofore considered "The Wreck" (New York Mirror, vol. 2, pp. 313-314). For a list of Simms's short fiction, see Betty Jo Strickland's excellent "The Short Fiction of William Gilmore Simms: A Checklist," Mississippi Quarterly, 21 (1976), 591-608.
For these letters and a study of them, see James Kibler, "The Album (1826)—The Significance of the Recently Discovered Second Volume," Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 62-78, and "Simms's First Letters: 'Letters from the West (1826),'" Southern Literary Journal, 19 (1987), 81-91.
For example, see his "The Broken Arrow," written in May 1825 and first published in Charleston Courier (31 May 1826) and "The Modern Lion," Charleston City Gazette (22 Dec. 1830). The latter has particularly close similarities to "Light Reading" because also spoken by a young dandy of the city:
i
I am a pretty gentleman,
I walk about at ease,
My habits are all pleasant ones,
And very apt to please.
I dress with taste and tidyness,
My coat's a purple brown;
And with a bamboo in my hand,
I switch my way 'bout town.
The ladies like me, terribly—
And 'pon my soul, I'm sure,
My absence were a sad disease
That I alone could cure.
To me they all refer at once
My judgment, it is law;
I fill them all with love of me,
And that begets their awe.
'Twixt twelve and three I shop with them
At four o'clock I dine—
And 'twixt the six and eight I loll,
Or push about the wine.
Then for the evening coterie,
And for the evening chat,
I put my lilac breeches on,
And take my velvet hat.
My visage is remarkable—
For so they all agree,—
At least, they're all in love with it,
And that's enough for me.
'Twould do you good to see my face,
And forehead, I declare;
One half the latter smooth and smack,
The other black with hair.
Two different pictures should you see;—
My right profile is grand;
The Brigand pattern, savage—sad—
Most admirably plann'd.
While, on the left—Adonis' self
Would much his fortune bless,
To own my style of countenance,
And steal my fav'rite tress.
I have been painted many times—
But never to my mind;
I think to sit to Inman soon
As I can raise the wind.
I'll write a book to print with it,
And in a little while,
Employ the 'Mirror' and the 'Star'
To show me up in style.
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