University of Virginia Library

Despite its 1854 publication, the volume's title page bears the date 1853. For a descriptive bibliography and publication history of Poems Descriptive, Dramatic, Legendary and Contemplative, see James E. Kibler, The Poetry of William Gilmore Simms: An Introduction and Bibliography (Columbia, S. C.: Southern Studies Program, 1979), 90 — 97.

The single sheet is among loose papers in the extensive Simms Collection of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Manuscripts item P 1540.

Letter of Simms to Henry Panton, 25 January 1853, in The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, ed. Mary C. Simms Oliphant, et al. (University of South Carolina Press, 1952 — 82), III, 224.

Letters, III, 255, and Kibler, The Poetry of William Gilmore Simms, 96.

Simms in a letter to Benjamin Perry, Letters, III, 158.

Letters, III, 261 — 262.

Simms, "Poe's Poetry," Charleston, S. C. Southern Patriot (10 November 1845) and reprinted in Simms Review, I, no. 2 (Winter 1993), 20 — 25. Here Simms defends Poe against his Boston critics.

Simms in a letter to Robert Mackenzie, 8 January 1854, in Letters, III, 275.

Simms, "The Writings of Washington Allston," Southern Quarterly Review, IV (October 1843), 381, 390.

Letter of 13 March 1854, Letters, III, 286.

Simms, "The Writings of Washington Allston," 390.

As described by contemporary poet and novelist Fred Chappell, writing of Simms for the University of Georgia Press Selected Poems of William Gilmore Simms (1990).