Wheatley, Phillis

Impact on the world

Published 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral' in London in 1773, becoming the first African American, and one of the first women in the American colonies, to publish a book, a milestone achieved at around age 20 that drew praise from figures including George Washington while prompting a formal panel of prominent Bostonian men to publicly attest she had actually written the poems herself.

Life & background

Kidnapped from West Africa as a child and transported on a slave ship called the Phillis, for which she was named, Wheatley was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston around age seven or eight. Recognizing her unusual intellectual gifts, the family gave her an education in English, classical literature, and religious studies highly unusual for an enslaved person, or for a woman of any race, in colonial America, and she began publishing poems in newspapers by her early teens. Unable to find a colonial publisher willing to print a book by an enslaved author, she traveled to London in 1773, where her collection became the first book of poetry published by an African American; a panel of prominent Bostonians, including the colony's governor, had to formally attest to her authorship before publication because many colonists refused to believe an enslaved African woman could have written it. She was emancipated shortly after the book's publication, married a free Black Bostonian, but spent her final years in poverty, dying at 31 after working as a scullery maid to support her family; her later poetry collection was never published due to lack of patron support.

Sources

1. National Park Service; NMAAHC (The Power of Poetry)