Phillis wheatley biographical information
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Phillis Wheatley
(1753-1784)
Who Was Phillis Wheatley?
Poet Phillis Wheatley was brought to Boston, Massachusetts, on an enslaved person ship in 1761 and was purchased by John Wheatley as a personal servant to his wife. The Wheatleys educated Phillis and she soon mastered Latin and Greek, going on to write highly acclaimed poetry. She published her first poem in 1767 and her first volume of verse, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in 1773. Having been freed from slavery, she later married and struggled financially, with Wheatley unable to find a publisher for her second volume of poems.
Early Years
A pioneering African American poet, Wheatley was born in Senegal/Gambia around 1753. At the age of eight, she was kidnapped and brought to Boston on an enslaved person ship. Upon her arrival, John Wheatley purchased the young girl, who was in fragile health, as a servant for his wife, Susanna.
Under the family's direction, Wheatley (who, as was the custom at the time, adopted her master's last name) was taken under Susanna's wing. Her quick intelligence was hard to miss, and as a result, Susanna and her two children taught Wheatley to read and was actively encouraged in her literary pursuits by the household.
Wheatley received lessons in theology, English
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Phillis Wheatley Peters is broadly recognized as the first African American woman and only the third American woman to publish a book of poems. Her works continues to be studied by historians, and her legacy has inspired generations of writers.
Born around 1753 in Gambia, Africa, Wheatley was captured by enslavers and brought to America in 1761. Upon arrival, she was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston, Massachusetts. Her first name Phillis was derived from the ship that brought her to America, “the Phillis.”
The Wheatley family educated her and within sixteen months of her arrival in America she could read the Bible, Greek and Latin classics, and British literature. She also studied astronomy and geography. In her early teenage years, Wheatley began to write poetry, publishing her first poem in 1767. Publication of “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine George Whitefield” in 1770 brought her great notoriety. In 1773, with financial support from the English Countess of Huntingdon, Wheatley traveled to London with the Wheatley's son to publish her first collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral—the first book written by an enslaved Black woman in America. It included a forward, signed by John Hancock and other Boston notables—as
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Phillis Wheatley
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In 1773 her cheeriness book, Poems