author
Phillis Wheatley
1753–1784
Taken from West Africa as a child and enslaved in Boston, she became one of the best-known poets of early America and the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry. Her work made her an international literary figure while she was still very young.
1 Audiobook
Poems on various subjects, religious and moral
by Phillis Wheatley
About the author
Born in West Africa around 1753, she was brought to Boston in 1761 and purchased by the Wheatley family, who educated her in reading and writing. She showed remarkable literary skill early on and began publishing poems as a teenager.
Her 1773 collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral made history, establishing her as the first African American woman to publish a book and one of the earliest Black authors in the Atlantic world to gain wide recognition. She was read in both America and Britain, and her writing engaged religion, liberty, and the politics of her time.
After gaining her freedom, she married John Peters, but her later years were marked by poverty and hardship. She died in 1784, yet her legacy has only grown: she remains a central figure in American literature and in the history of Black writing.