Text: Anonymous, “The Periodical Press,” Southern Quarterly Review (Columbia, SC), vol. I, no. 1, January 1842, pp. 5-66

[page 30, continued:]

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Mr. White, the editor and proprietor of “the Southern Literary Messenger,” has been indefatigable in his exertions to render it a valuable, agreeable and popular work, and has generally presided over its interests with judgment and taste. Edgar A. Poe, Esq., a gentleman of brilliant but eccentric powers, and the author of some works of fiction, composed in a very original vein of thought, was for a short [page 31:] time its editor, and it throve under his auspices. Judge Upshur, Judge Tucker, Professor Dew and Governor Cass, have been occasional contributors to its pages. Mrs. Ellet, one of the best Italian scholars of our country, has sometimes written for it, and Mrs. Sigourney has furnished for it poetical articles. Mr. Simms, the author of “the Yemassee,” has contributed both to the prose and poetical departments of the work. He was the author of the very vigorous article on the subject of our domestic institutions, which appeared, a year or two since, in its pages. Besides the preparation of his novels, Mr. Simms has found time to contribute, more or less, to all our monthly, and, occasionally, to our quarterly periodicals. Notwithstanding some faults of style and judgment, of which he is conscious, and which he is always ready to correct when pointed out to him, few writers deserve greater praise for their industry; few surpass him, when he properly tasks his powers, in vigorous conception, and a bold and manly expression of his thoughts, and none in the amenity of disposition with which he listens to the criticism of the press, however severe, nor in the readiness with which he adapts his views to meet it, provided he is satisfied that it is just, and that its authors are actuated by friendly feelings. For the last ten years, since he has been upon the literary arena, he has written and published, in the shape of essays, criticisms and various works of fiction, productions which, if collected together, would make at least thirty volumes, of the dimensions of our ordinary-sized novels ; — all of which have been more or less read, and are more or less deserving of the approval of his countrymen. “The Southern Literary Messenger” has a handsome circulation of, we believe, about four thousand copies, and its popularity and influence, which it has so well sustained for a series of years, is, at the present moment, unabated.

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