Simon Suggs: Harmful Humor

In Adventures of Simon Suggs, Johnson Jones Hooper creates a swift, sneaky and persuasive character Simon, who is intended to be a replica of himself. According to Robert Hopkins he states that it this book is simply a “burlesque of campaign biographies.” Although in the beginning chapters Simon claims to compare himself to the earlier president’s in later chapters this comedic elements begin to make fun of other cultures especially the Indians. This interpretation is also seen in the article written by Johanna Shields. She argues that the Adventures of Simon Suggs provoked laughter but with repercussions. Hopkins would oppose her argument because Hooper intended for Simon Suggs to be humorous not harmful.

Simon Suggs: More Than Satire

In his essay “Simon Suggs: A Burlesque Campaign Biography,” Robert Hopkins argues that Johnson Jones Hooper’s novel Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs deserves recognition as a burlesque of campaign biographies. He presents multiple examples from the novel which support his claim, but also hints at the novel’s ability to fit into many other genres and sub-genres. In paralleling the actions of Andrew Jackson to those of Simon Suggs, and finding inconsistencies in the novel's genre as a picaresque narrative, this essay discusses Hopkins’s essay and the argument for Simon Suggs as a burlesque campaign biography.

White Freedom vs. Black Slavery: Johnson Hooper’s Humor and Worldview

In Some Adventures of Simon Suggs, Johnson Hooper uses his fictional newspaper editor “Johns” and fictional candidate “Suggs” as foils for his own contradictory nature. Johanna Nicol Shields examines this in her article “ A Sadder Simon Suggs: Freedom and Slavery in the Humor of Johnson Hooper.” Hooper himself, says Shields, experienced both sides of the Johns/Suggs dichotomy; as a young man, he was Suggs, Southern born, Southern bred, looking for his fortune in any way possible, looking toward the West. He was also the editor, the Western gentleman.
Johnson Hooper’s dual nature, as explored in Simon Suggs, enables his humor to deal with the story of white freedom; of Southern scions’ freedom from geographical lines as the Western frontier opened. In this adventure, however, the black characters are pawns as well as foils for the white story.

Edgar Allan Poe reads Simon Suggs?

Since many of Edgar Allan Poe's newspaper reviews were unsigned, attribution of his articles to him is sometimes a matter of guesswork. Nevertheless, a paragraph from a newspaper column believed to be Poe's praises Hooper's collection (which, like our edition, includes several other sketches by the author):

Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), "Our Book-Shelves (IV)," from the Aristidean, October 1845, pp. 320-322.]


CAREY and HART have issued "The Life and Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs," &c. With engravings after designs, by DARLEY. We sat down to this book quietly; read, laughed — read, and laughed again. There is more true, indigenous humor in this, than anything we have yet seen, from the American press — "Jack Downing," "Jonathan Slick," and "Major Jones," not excepted. Captain SUGGS is a man of metal — "yea! an honest, incorruptible — very jewel of a fellow." And Daddy ELIAS BIGGS — with his repeated visits to the "yeathen war" — and his hatred of the Chatahospa people! That he may speedily have another scrape at COCKERELL'S BEND, is our earnest wish. The designs of DARLEY, in the book, like all he does, are inimitable. The look of profound fright in the sentry — the solemn grandeur of Captain SUGGS, at the drum-head court-martial — the portrait of the veritable Captain himself — his reception of the Bank President — with KIT KUNCKER, his horse and his dog — are they not all pictured by the graver?

The author of this book is the editor of a country paper, in ALABAMA, in which, we believe, the sketches first appeared. He is evidently a man of the most decided, unapproachable and original humor.

The latest news from academia on SW Humor

More (very recent) scholarship from Johanna Shields on the subject of authorship and SW Humor

Yet more scholarship on Hooper

This essay includes a section discussing Simon's relationship with his father, Jedediah Suggs.

A Sadder (but not wiser) Simon Suggs

The following link to Johanna Shields' essay on the Creek Indian sketches in the Adventures of Simon Suggs was referred to in class (and may or may not be the one to which Beth was referring).