Phillis Wheatley, or Phillis Wheatley Peters as she was sometimes referred to, was the first African-American woman to achieve literary prominence in the United States. She was born in what is now Senegal in West Africa about 1753 and died on December 5, 1784 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Slave traffickers seized the future Phillis Wheatley in West Africa in 1761 and brought her to Boston. John Wheatley, a tailor, and his wife, Susanna, owned her as a slave. Their ship’s name, the Phillis, inspired the naming of their daughter. While working for the Wheatleys, she attended school there, which is unique for enslaved people at the time.
After studying it for less than two years, Phillis was fluent in English. After that, she studied Greek and Latin and shocked the intellectual community of Boston by translating a story by Ovid. She started writing poetry in her early teens, and her early works show clear stylistic and thematic influences from British Neoclassical writers like Alexander Pope.
Despite her status as a slave, Phillis Wheatley Peters became one of the most celebrated writers in the United States before the 19th century. The abolitionists used Wheatley as proof that African Americans could succeed in the arts and academia.
She was educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston merchant John Wheatley. And was lionised in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems. And paraded before the new republic’s political leadership and the old empire’s aristocracy. Her successes helped propel the nascent anti-slavery campaign, and her name became common parlance among educated colonists.
Who Was Phillis Wheatley?
Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose name can also be written Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753–December 5, 1784), was an American writer often regarded as the first African-American author of a book of poetry.
She was born in West Africa, but at the age of seven or eight, she was kidnapped and sold into captivity. The Wheatley family of Boston eventually bought her. She was encouraged to pursue poetry after her literacy was recognised.
In 1773, Wheatley travelled to London with the son of her enslaver to try to get her writing published there. While there, she met some notable people who ended up becoming her patrons. Poems on Different Topics, Religious and Moral, which was published in London on September 1, 1773. Catapulted her to prominence in both England and the American colonies. George Washington and others commended her efforts. A few years later, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon acknowledged her work in a poem of his own.
Wheatley’s slave owners freed her soon after the novel came out.
They passed away quickly, and she wed John Peters, a destitute grocery store owner. They had three kids, all of whom died at young ages. At the age of 31, Wheatley-Peters passed away in obscurity and poverty.
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Education Of Phillis Wheatley
The Wheatleys provided her with an education. And by the time she arrived in the United States at the age of sixteen, she could read the Bible, Greek and Latin classics, and works of British literature.
The fields of geography and astronomy were also among her academic pursuits. Wheatley started writing poetry when she was 14 years old. And her first poem was published in 1767. She became well-known after publishing “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Famous Divine George Whitefield” in 1770.
In 1773, Wheatley published Poems on Different Topics, Religious and Moral, the first book written by a black woman in America, with the help of financial backing from the English Countess of Huntingdon. With a foreword signed by John Hancock and other prominent Bostonians and a portrait of Wheatley, the book set out to prove that the author was a black woman. Eventually, she was given her freedom.
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Marriage Of Phillis Wheatley
The years after Phillis’s trip to London were challenging, despite her writing’s unprecedented fame. Despite being manumitted about the time her book came out. Being free in 1774 Boston was extremely challenging.
The majority of the Wheatleys perished between 1774 and 1778. And Phillis was unable to find investors or buyers for her subsequent publications. There were bright spots; in 1778, she wed John Peters, a free black man. As author Vincent Carretta puts it, “much about Phillis Wheatley’s life between 1776 and her death in 1784 remains a mystery,” including the exact number of children the couple had.
All indications are that not a single one of their kids made it past the baby years. They were so poor that in 1785 Peters had to go to jail due to their financial difficulties. Phillis kept on writing, exploring everything from biblical themes to the horrors of slavery. But she was unable to make a living from it.
(John C. Shields claims that many of these poems are gone forever, but that a few were unearthed in the 1970s and 1980s.) She found work as a housekeeper in a nearby boardinghouse, but on December 5th, 1784, she passed away. A ill baby died alongside her that day. The final lines of “An Elegy on Departing,” Phillis Wheatley’s final published poem (which Caroline Wigginton recently contends was actually penned by English poet Mary Whateley), provide a far happier picture of the glorious afterlife:
Conclusion
Wheatley, who was the first African-American and one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in the colonies. Picked up the language at a young age and read and wrote in English, Latin, Greek, the Bible, and other classics.
At the tender age of thirteen, she began crafting verses in the style of contemporary English poets like John Milton, Thomas Gray, and Alexander Pope. Wheatley achieved widespread recognition after the publication of her poem “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield” as a broadside in major American cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
In addition to being published in New York, this poem appeared in London as well. She began printing elegy broadsides for notable English and colonial figures, and continued to do so for the next several years.
Wheatley wrote a letter and poem in 1776 in support of George Washington. And Washington invited him to visit him in Cambridge. Saying he would be “glad to see a person so favoured by the muses.”In 1778, she tied the knot with John Peters, owner of a comprehensive mercantile establishment.
Tragically, all three of their small children perished at a young age. Wheatley tried to publish a new volume of her poetry. Which would have included 33 new poems and 13 new letters. But she was unable to do so due to a lack of subscriptions.
Notwithstanding her former fame, Phillis Wheatley passed away in obscurity on December 5, 1784, at the age of 32. At the time, she was a ripe old age of 31. Poems intended for her second volume vanished and were never found.
