Long considered a leading literary figure of the Old South, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) wrote letters, novels, short fiction, drama, essays, and poetry in his prolific career. Born in Charleston to an old South Carolina family of modest means and raised by a grandmother with whom his father left him after his mother's death, Simms felt a simultaneous sense of loyalty to and alienation from his native region. He was a major intellectual figure on the East Coast before the Civil War but saw his New York publishers abandon him after secession, of which he was a vocal supporter. Simms's novels and poetry have been published in modern editions, and he has been the subject of numerous biographies and critical studies, but until now there has been no collection covering the broad spectrum of his writings. 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.

In Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men, Thomas Ruys Smith collects nineteenth-century stories, sketches, and book excerpts by a gallery of authors to create a comprehensive collection of writings about the riverboat gambler. The voices of canonized writers such as William Dean Howells, Herman Melville, and, inevitably, Mark Twain hold prominent positions. But they mingle seamlessly with lesser-known pieces such as an excerpt from Edward Willett's sensationalistic dime novel Flush Fred's Full Hand, raucous sketches by anonymous Old Southwestern humorists from The Spirit of the Times, and colorful accounts by now nearly forgotten authors like Daniel R. Hundley and George W. Featherstonhaugh. Smith puts the twenty-eight selections in perspective with an Introduction that for the first time thoroughly explores the history and myth surrounding this endlessly fascinating American cultural icon.