She was the first globally recognized African American female poet and is considered the first important Black woman writer in the United States. Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia or Senegal on the west coast of Africa about 1753. In 1761, when she was around 8 years old, she was forcibly kidnapped and taken to Boston MA, on the ship Phillis, for which she was named. She was bought by John Wheatley of Boston to serve as his wife Susannah’s companion. Although she was a slave, the Wheatleys both instructed and encouraged her education. Although she spoke no English upon her arrival, she soon proved to be a precocious learner, and was tutored by the Wheatleys' daughter Mary in English, Latin, history, geography, religion, and the Bible in particular.
Phillis became well-read in the Bible, classical literature, and English literature, responding especially to the works of Alexander Pope and John Milton. At age 12, she could not only read and write English but Greek and Latin as well. As John Wheatley recalled later, Phillis quickly mastered the English language “to such a degree as to read any, the most difficult parts of the Sacred Writings, to the great astonishment of all who heard her.” These would have been remarkable accomplishments for an educated White male boy, and was virtually unheard of for White females. The family recognized her literary talent and encouraged it. She was showed her off to their friends, many came to visit with this "lively and brilliant conversationalist." She was thoroughly indoctrinated into Puritanism.
Her education was that of a young woman in an elite Boston family but, as an enslaved woman, she was denied access to freedoms available to White members of the Wheatley family. Phillis's place was designated by her white world, and she was virtually cut off from her own people, but she was definitely still a slave, although a privileged one. Though superior to most in her intellectual and literary accomplishments, she was clearly never their social equal. She was converted to Christianity, becoming a member of the Old South Congregational Church. Her first poem, “To the University of Cambridge in New England” was written when she was 14, but it wasn't published. Phillis first published poem was “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin”, published in Rhode Island’s Newport Mercury newspaper on December 21, 1767. Many White people of the time found it hard to believe a Black woman could be so intelligent and write poetry.
In 1770, international fame came when she wrote an elegy on the death of George Whitefield. Whitefield was a celebrated evangelical Methodist minister who had traveled through the American colonies. The elegy drew international attention and the particular interest of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon. Whitefield had been the Countess's personal chaplain. The poem was published on a broadside and a pamphlet in both Boston and Philadelphia, along with the funeral sermon from Whitefield’s funeral. In the elegy, the pious Wheatley discussed Whitefield’s care and concern for African-American slaves:
“Take him my dear Americans, he said/ Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid: Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you/ Impartial Saviour is his title due: Wash’d in the fountain of redeeming blood/You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.”
In 1773, Wheatley gained considerable stature when she wrote her first and only book of verse, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral." Unable to find a publisher in America, in May of 1773 she accompanied the Wheatley family's son Nathaniel to England, where plans for the publication had begun. Her reputation preceded her. Her volume of poetry had received patronage from Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon and William Legge, the 2nd the Earl of Dartmouth. She met many influential people, including the Lord Mayor of London, (who presented her with a copy of Milton’s "Paradise Lost" ), and Benjamin Franklin. The publication in London of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral on September 1, 1773, brought her fame both in England and the American colonies. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was printed in 11 editions until 1816.
Americans and Europeans were impressed by both the power of Wheatley’s poetry and the inspiration of her personal biography. Yet, Wheatley’s success also brought skepticism among colonial printers who doubted whether a precocious enslaved woman could produce such vibrant poetry. As proof of her authorship Wheatley had to defend her literary ability in court. A panel of 18 of the “most respectable characters in Boston” were assembled to verify the authorship of Wheatley’s poems. The panel was assembled by John Wheatley himself, who asserted that she had indeed written the poems in it. To authenticate and support here work, there were other colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in some copies of Poems on Various Subjects. They include Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor; James Bowdoin; and Reverend Mather Byles.
"Poems on Various Subjects" is a landmark achievement in U.S. history. In publishing it, Wheatley became the first Black person and first U.S. enslaved person to publish a book of poems, as well as the third American woman to do so. Ultimately, the panel signed a letter publicly testifying to Wheatley’s authorship. One of the poems from “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” she wrote:
“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 snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat. . . Such, such my case. And can I then but pray/ Others may never feel tyrannic sway?”
For many, the book made her “the most famous African on the Earth.” Even the great French philosopher, Voltaire was impressed and inspired by her work, writing friends arguing that people of color could indeed be literate and write poetry. She was called home by the illness of Mrs. Susannah Wheatley, and departed before the book appeared in September. Arriving in Boston in September 1773, she nursed her mistress until Susanna Wheatley died the following March. Her popularity as a poet both in the United States and England ultimately brought her freedom from slavery on October 18, 1773. A recent court ruling had essentially freed all enslaved persons brought from the colonies on arriving in England. Wheatley returned to America with the promise of Nathaniel Wheatley that he would grant her freedom, which he did one month after she returned.
As tensions grew between Great Britain and her colonies Phillis turned her attention to political matters in her writing and often corresponded with British writers discussing at length the tenor of the times. In 1774, Phillis Wheatley continued to increase her public presence as an anti-slavery voice. She was a strong voice among abolitionist writers using anti-slavery statements in her work within the confines of her era and her position as a slave. Phillis Wheatley corresponded with key abolitionist figures: Reverend Samuel Hopkins, a theologian and leader of the emerging American abolitionist movement; British abolitionist leader Granville Sharp; and British merchant and philanthropist John Thorton, the sponsor of abolitionist preacher John Newton.
A strong supporter of America's fight for independence, Wheatley penned several poems in honor of the Continental Army's commander, George Washington. During the Siege of Boston in 1775, she wrote a poem, “To His Excellency George Washington”. Wheatley composed the poem with hopes that Washington would apply the Revolution’s principles of equality and liberty to enslaved persons. Washington wrote back on February 28, 1776, writing that he thought the “elegant Lines” of Wheatley’s poem were “striking proof of your poetical talents". It eventually inspirited an invitation to visit him at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wheatley accepted the offer and visited Washington in March of 1776.
She was twenty-two at the time. Like many prominent people of the day, George Washington became a big admirer of Phillis Wheatley. Also like many prominent people at the time, he was an owner of enslaved people. Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, he stated privately that he no longer wanted to be a slaveowner, that he no longer wanted to buy and sell slaves or separate enslaved families, and that he supported a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery in the United States. His will provided for their freedom after his death. Wheatley’s work slowed down thereafter. She shared one of her last great poems on the Revolution in 1778, “On the Death of General Wooster,” in which she directly addressed the conflict between the Revolutionary ideals of freedom and the evils of slavery.
Although she had been emancipated, Phillis Wheatley continued to live with various members of the Wheatley family until 1778. That same year she married a free Black grocer named John Peters, the same year John Wheatley died. They had three children. Their marriage proved to be a struggle, with the couple battling constant poverty. Wheatley did continue to write, but the growing tensions with the British and, ultimately, the Revolutionary War, weakened enthusiasm for her poems. During the late 1770s, notices of Phillis Wheatley Peters and her work were regularly published in colonial New England newspapers. News of her travels and details of her life are juxtaposed with first-hand accounts of the growing tensions between Britain and the colonies.
The now-Phillis Peters proposed to publish a second collection of poems in 1779, promising several letters and thirty-three poems, but the promise was never fulfilled. Wheatley failed to get enough subscribers despite putting out six advertisements for her new collection, ending her attempt to publish a second collection. To support her family, she worked as a maid in a boardinghouse while continuing to write poetry. Beset with financial problems, she sold her volume of Milton’s "Paradise Lost" to pay debts. Life was extremely difficult for Phillis and John. She was often in poor health. John, not a good businessman was in an out of debtor’s prison for the next few years. With a sickly infant son to provide for, Phillis became a scullery maid at several locale boarding houses.
Another owner of enslaved people, Thomas Jefferson, shared neither Washington’s opinion of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry or his ambivalence about slavery. In his book “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson wrote, “Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Wheatley; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.” In that same book he also declared that white people were intellectually and biologically superior to Blacks. As we all know, Thomas Jefferson’s relation to slavery was to put it mildly, extremely complicated. Like most of the Founding Fathers there was a profound disconnect between his rhetoric of freedom and liberty and the fact that during the course of his life he enslaved more than six hundred black people.
Phillis Wheatley's pride in her African heritage was evident. Her writing style embraced the elegy, likely from her African roots, where it was the role of girls to sing and perform funeral dirges. Religion was also a key influence, and it led Protestants in America and England to enjoy her work. Enslavers and abolitionists both read her work; the former to convince the enslaved population to convert, the latter as proof of the intellectual abilities of people of color. Between 1776 and 1784, the year of her death, Phillis Wheatley Peters’ name appeared less frequently in newspapers and magazines. She died after she had developed pneumonia at the young age of 31 in 1784 the same year as her third child passed away. Wheatley’s poetry left an impression on both sides of the Atlantic as a global poet of the American Revolution and one of the first prominent African-American abolitionist voices.