William Gilmore Simms (April 17, 1806 – June 11, 1870) was an American writer and politician from the American South who was a "staunch defender" of slavery. A poet, novelist, and historian, his History of South Carolina served as the definitive textbook on state history for much of the 20th century. Literary scholars consider him a major force in antebellum Southern literature; in 1845 Edgar Allan Poe pronounced him the best novelist America had ever produced. Throughout much of his literary career he served as editor of several journals and newspapers. He also served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1844–1846. Early and family life Simms was born on April 17, 1806, in Charleston, South Carolina, of Scots-Irish ancestors. His mother, Harriet Ann Augusta (née Singleton, 1784-1808) died during his infancy; his father William Gilmore Simms Senior (1762-1830) failed in business and joined Coffee's Indian fighters. Simms was raised by his maternal grandmother, Jane Miller Singleton Gates, who had lived through the American Revolutionary War and who told Simms stories about it. In his teen years, Simms worked as a clerk in a drugstore and aspired to study medicine. Simms began to study law when he was eighteen (circa 1824). He would receive an honorary LLD from the University of Alabama in 1841. He married Anna Malcolm Giles in 1826. After her death, he married Chevillette Eliza Roach (pronounced "Roche"), with whom he had 14 children, only 5 of whom lived to adulthood. He was admitted to the South Carolina bar in 1827; however, he soon abandoned this profession for literature. Early writings Simms first wrote poetry at the age of eight. In his 19th year, he produced a monody on General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (Charleston, 1825). Two years later, in 1827, he published Lyrical and Other Poems and Early Lays. In 1828 he became a journalist as well as editor and part owner of the City Gazette, a position he held until 1832 when the publication failed. Simms devoted his attention entirely to writing and in rapid succession published The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and Other Poems (1829); The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris (1830); and his strongest long poem, Atalantis, a Tale of the Sea (1832). Atalantis established his fame as an author. His novel Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, an expanded version of an earlier short story called "The Confessions