Phillis Wheatley Documents:
Biography 1:
One of the most celebrated of early black writers, African-born Phillis
Wheatley was captured when she was about eight years old and sold to the
Wheatley family in Boston as a household servant. Educated by her Boston
owners, the girl showed amazing aptitude. Soon she was writing and
publishing poetry. This work, published in England where British societal
leaders received and entertained Wheatley, includes affidavits affirming that
Wheatley was a woman of unmixed African ancestry. In this volume,
Wheatley discusses her African background and her love of freedom.
Wheatley was freed as an adult.
Excerpt from "To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth"
Phillis Wheatley, 1773
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatcli'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?
Steel'd was that son] and by no misery mov'd
That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favors to renew,
Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.
May heav'nly race the sacred sanction give
To all thy worts, and thou for ever live
Not onlv on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name,
But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God
Biography 2:
Phillis Wheatley was the first African American, the first slave, and
the third woman in the United States to publish a book of poems.
Kidnapped in West Africa and transported aboard the slave ship
Phillis to Boston in 1761, she was purchased by John Wheatley as a
servant for his wife. Young Phillis quickly learned to speak English
and to read the Bible with amazing fluency.
Because of her poor health, obvious intelligence, and Susannah
Wheatley's fondness for her, Phillis was never trained as a domestic;
instead she was encouraged by the Wheatleys to study theology and
the English, Latin and Greek classics. She published her first poem in
1767, and six years later, she published a book, Poems on Various
Subjects. That same year, John Wheatley emancipated her.
Wheatley achieved international renown, traveling to London to
promote her book and being called upon as well as received by noted
social and political figures of the day -- including George Washington,
to whom she wrote a poem of praise at the beginning of the war, and
Voltaire, who referred to her "very good English verse."
Wheatley lived in poverty after her 1778 marriage to John Peters, a
free black Bostonian. Although Wheatley advertised for subscriptions
to a second volume of poems and letters, she died before she was
able to secure a publisher. Her final manuscript was never found.
Phillis Wheatley in 1834
Biography 3:
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was the first black poet in America to publish a book. She was born
around 1753 in West Africa and brought to New England in 1761, where John
Wheatley of Boston purchased her as a gift for his wife. Although they brought her
into the household as a slave, the Wheatleys took a great interest in Phillis's
education. Many biographers have pointed to her precocity; Wheatley learned to
read and write English by the age of nine, and she became familiar with Latin, Greek,
the Bible, and selected classics at an early age. She began writing poetry at thirteen,
modeling her work on the English poets of the time, particularly John Milton, Thomas
Gray, and Alexander Pope. Her poem "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George
Whitefield" was published as a broadside in cities such as Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia and garnered Wheatley national acclaim. This poem was also printed in
London. Over the next few years, she would print a number of broadsides elegizing
prominent English and colonial leaders.
Wheatley's doctor suggested that a sea voyage might improve her delicate health, so
in 1771 she accompanied Nathaniel Wheatley on a trip to London. She was well
received in London and wrote to a friend of the "unexpected and unmerited civility
and complaisance with which I was treated by all." In 1773, thirty-nine of her poems
were published in London as Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. The
book includes many elegies as well as poems on Christian themes; it also includes
poems dealing with race, such as the often-anthologized "On Being Brought from
Africa to America." She returned to America in 1773.
After Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley died, Phillis was left to support herself as a seamstress
and poet. It is unclear precisely when Wheatley was freed from slavery, although
scholars suggest it occurred between 1774 and 1778. In 1776, Wheatley wrote a
letter and poem in support of George Washington; he replied with an invitation to
visit him in Cambridge, stating that he would be "happy to see a person so favored
by the muses." In 1778, she married John Peters, who kept a grocery store. They
had three children together, all of whom died young. Because of the war and the
poor economy, Wheatley experienced difficulty publishing her poems. She solicited
subscribers for a new volume that would include thirty-three new poems and thirteen
letters, but was unable to raise the funds. Phillis Wheatley, who had once been
internationally celebrated, died alone in a boarding house in 1784. She was thirtyone years old. Many of the poems for her proposed second volume disappeared and
have never been recovered.
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