William Gilmore Simms - Life and Work

Life and Work

Simms was born on April 17, 1806, in Charleston, South Carolina, of Scottish-Irish ancestors. His mother died during his infancy, and his father failed in business and joined Coffee's Indian fighters; as a result, Simms was brought up by his grandmother. In his teen years, he worked as a clerk in a drug store but began to study law at the age of eighteen. He married Anne Malcolm Giles in 1826. The bar of Charleston admitted him to practice in 1827, though he soon abandoned this profession for literature.

Read more about this topic:  William Gilmore Simms

Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or work:

    “We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.”
    —Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    “If your work is made more easy
    By a friendly, helping hand,
    Say so.”
    —Unknown. If You Have a Friend (l. 31–33)