Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784)

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American and one of the first women to publish a book of poems in the USA.

At age eight, she was kidnapped from her home in West Africa by slave traders and brought to America, where she was sold to John Wheatley in Boston, Massachusetts. Her first name derived from the slave ship she had traveled on.

Phillis was permitted by the Wheatleys to be educated, and quickly learned to read and write English. She studied the Bible, Greek and Latin classics, British literature, astronomy, and geography. At age 13, she began to write poetry, publishing her first poem in 1767. Her poem "On the Death of the Celebrated Divine Rev. Mr. George Whitefield,” which appeared in 1770, brought her national fame. In 1771, she traveled with the Wheatley's son Nathaniel to visit London, where she was well received and there published her first collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Back in Boston, following the death of the elder Wheatleys, Phillis had to support herself and worked as a seamstress. It's unclear when she was emancipated from slavery, although it may have been between 1774 and 1778. In 1776, she wrote a letter and poem praising the appointment of George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, although she continued to use her pen to oppose slavery.

In 1778, she married John Peters, a free Black man from Boston who owned a grocery store, and the couple had three children, none of whom survived infancy. Phillis had great difficulty publishing further poetry, and, abandoned by her husband, worked as a servant. She died in poverty at age 31 in 1784. Two collections of her works were issued posthumously, Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley (1834), with a preface and short biography by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a collateral descendant of the Wheatleys; and Letters of Phillis Wheatley, the Negro Slave-Poet of Boston (1864).