Pelayo: a story of the Goth Volume 1

by William Gilmore Simms

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 2007

About the author

William Gilmore Simms (April 17, 1806 – June 11, 1870) was a poet, novelist and historian from the American South whose novels achieved great prominence during the 19th century, with Edgar Allan Poe pronouncing him the best novelist America had ever produced. In recent decades, though, Simms' novels have fallen out of favor, although he is still known among literary scholars as a major force in antebellum Southern literature. He is also remembered for his strong support of slavery and for his opposition to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in response to which he wrote reviews and a novel.

Reviews

[Matt Simmons · Rating 3 out of 5]

A flawed novel, with odd bits that read more like an Elizabethan play than prose fiction, and a plot that is at times too complicated, and some really over-the-top scenes. Simms conceived of this work as the first of a two-novel series that would tell of the last days of Gothic Spain, and the sequel was supposed to tie up the complex plot (I'll be reading the sequel soon). In that, I can cut him some slack. Yet, Pelayo still has its flaws.

Nevertheless, I still find this to be a solid, and in a lot of ways very good, novel. As an adventure story, it's top-notch. Intriguingly, it works quite well as a "novel of ideas." Simms seems be trying to take the concepts of the American Revolution and write this novel of Gothic Spain through those , challenging us to think about liberty, good government, justice, and the roles we owe to one another politically, as well. And in doing this, Simms also sets these political ideals against their personal costs, and shows us some deeply complicated characters struggling to act with virtue. The heroes of the work come off as almost myopic in their monomaniacal pursuits of liberty; Simms forces us to ask if their virtues are, in fact, vices. In this, he seems to be channeling an Aristotelian notion of virtue.

An imperfect, though nevertheless interesting and in many ways quite good, novel, that is rarely read today, but would find an audience amongst readers who enjoy the headier, more philosophical types of historical fiction and fantasy. If you're of one of those types, it's worth picking up. The University of South Carolina Press is releasing a new edition in the next few months (full disclosure: I'm writing the introduction to that edition), and the work is freely available on the Internet Archive.