A Christian in search of religious freedom

Southern Quarterly, Winter 2003 by Aiken, David

This notion is major in the Anglican Church, of which Simms was a communicant. Simms loved God, Who gave him the inner freedom to do as he pleased, while striving to live his calling to be a poet. Loving God, and having answered His call, it followed that, for Simms, all else he did was all right.

In a word, Simms loved God and did as he pleased.

NOTE

`Permission to publish excerpts is gratefully acknowledged to the South Caroliniana Library.

WORKS CITED

Simms, William Gilmore. Self-Development. An Oration Delivered Before the Literary Societies of Oglethorpe University, Georgia. 19 Nov. 1847. Milledgeville, GA: Thalian Society, 1847.

. The Sense of the Beautiful. An Address, Delivered by W Gilmore Simms, before the Charleston County Agricultural and Horticultural Association, May 3, 1870. Charleston: The Society, 1870.

"Choice of a Profession." Ms. Charles Carroll Simms Collection, U of South Carolina.

The Letters of William Gilmore Simms. Ed. Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Alfred Taylor Odell, and T. C. Duncan Eaves. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1952-1956, 1983.

DAVID AIKEN

DAVID AIKEN teaches at the College of Charleston. He is president of the Simms Society and past president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. He has written introductions to and reprinted many Simms titles, especially those available only in single editions, and is the author of Fire in the Cradle: Charleston's Literary Heritage (1999). He has been Simms Research Fellow at the University of South Carolina.