William Gilmore Simms (1806 1870) was a poet, novelist, historian, and politician from the American South.

“It is cause for rejoicing that another volume . . . is now added to the University of Arkansas Press’s distinguished series. I cannot imagine a more important editorial and publishing project in the field of nineteenth-century literature. With good texts available for the first time in a century or more, it is possible for critics, scholars, students, and general readers to study, understand, and re-evaluate this most neglected and underrated of American writers.”—James B. Meriwether, McClintock Emeritus Professor of Southern Letters, University of South Carolina“The best scenes in Cassique are exceptional, perhaps unique. They are painted in colors so vivid and with such a confident and practiced hand that the result is a work in which the highly exciting and realistic narrative movement is enhanced by what may be Simms’s finest achievement in description and imagery.” —Anne Blythe Merriwether, Immediate Past President of the William Gilmore Simms Society.