Both an enigmatic and a controversial figure, Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) was the first African American woman to have a book published. She was born in Africa, likely in what is now Senegal, and sold into slavery at age seven to John and Susannah Wheatley of Boston. She became the personal servant of Susannah, who taught her English and Christianity along with Latin, history, geography, and Western mythology. As early as 1765, she began to write poetry, which the family encouraged. By age thirteen, she published her first poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” based on the true story of two men who nearly drowned at sea. The next year, she published “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine George Whitefield,” which brought her more attention. Although publishers in Boston declined her work, with the Wheatley’s son she traveled to London, where the Countess of Huntingdon supported publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first book written by a black woman in America and the second to be written by any woman in America.

When she returned from London, she was emancipated by John Wheatley. Both he and his wife died in 1778, the year Phillis Wheatley married John Peters, a free black man, in Boston. During the next years, two of their children died, and in 1784, Wheatley died in childbirth with her third child, who survived her only briefly.

While the seriousness of Wheatley’s efforts has never been called into question, the significance of her contribution has been the source of controversy for more than two centuries. In fact, the authenticity of her work was called into question at various junctures during her own lifetime and subsequently. In addition, many critics have dismissed her style—characterized by classical allusions, formal diction, and strict patterns of rhyme and rhythm—as derivative of other eighteenth-century poets, such as Alexander Pope. Others have seen her work as groundbreaking, pointing to her confident literary persona, shrewd determination to gain a wide readership, and skill at encoding antislavery views in seemingly conventional structures.

The following documents include poetry and letters written by Wheatley along with recent analyses of her work and her influence by prominent African American intellectuals and artists.

Sources

Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America (1773)

To S.M. a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works (1773)

To the University of Cambridge, in New-England (1773)

To His Excellency General Washington (1776) (along with letters)

Letter to Reverend Samson Occom (1774)

Kevin Young, Homage to Phillis Wheatley (1998)

June Jordan, from The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America (2002)

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Mr. Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley (2002)