In the first reissue of these documents since 1865, A City Laid Waste captures in riveting detail the destruction of South Carolina's capital city. William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), a native South Carolinian and one of the nation's foremost men of letters, was in Columbia and witnessed firsthand the city's capture by Union forces and its subsequent devastation by fire. A renowned novelist and poet, who was also an experienced journalist and historian, Simms deftly recorded the events of February 1865 in a series of eyewitness accounts published in the first ten issues of the Columbia Phoenix...

Rife with historical details and peppered with comic characters, The Golden Christmas remains a timeless tale of South Carolina's rich holiday heritage. Originally published in 1852, William Gilmore Simms's classic lowcountry romance chronicles the social customs and Christmas traditions of an antebellum plantation near Charleston.