Early Life

The young girl who was to become Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped and taken to Boston on a slave ship in 1761 and purchased by a tailor, John Wheatley, as a personal servant for his wife, Susanna. She was treated kindly in the Wheatley household, almost as a third child. The Wheatleys soon recognized her talents and gave her privileges unusual for a slave, allowing her to learn to read and write. In less than two years, under the tutelage of Susanna and her daughter, Phillis had mastered English; she went on to learn Greek and Latin and caused a stir among Boston scholars by translating a tale from Ovid. Beginning in her early teens she wrote exceptionally mature, if conventional, verse that was stylistically influenced by Neoclassical poets such as Alexander Pope and was largely concerned with morality, piety, and freedom.

Historical Achievement as Published Poet

Wheatley’s first poem to appear in print was “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin” (1767), but she did not become widely known until the publication of “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine…George Whitefield” (1770), a tribute to Whitefield, a popular preacher with whom she may have been personally acquainted. The piece is typical of Wheatley’s poetic oeuvre both in its formal reliance on couplets and in its genre; more than one-third of her extant works are elegies to prominent figures or friends. A number of her other poems celebrate the nascent United States of America, whose struggle for independence was sometimes employed as a metaphor for spiritual or, more subtly, racial freedom. Though Wheatley generally avoided the topic of slavery in her poetry, her best-known work, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (written 1768), contains a mild rebuke toward some white readers: “Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain / May be refined, and join th’ angelic train.” Other notable poems include “To the University of Cambridge, in New England” (written 1767), “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty” (written 1768), and “On the Death of Rev. Dr. Sewall” (written 1769).

Phillis was escorted by the Wheatleys’ son to London in May 1773. Her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, where many of her poems first saw print, was published there the same year. Wheatley’s personal qualities, even more than her literary talent, contributed to her great social success in London. She returned to Boston in September because of the illness of her mistress. At the desire of friends she had made in England, she was soon freed. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wheatley died shortly thereafter. In 1778 she married John Peters, a free black man who eventually abandoned her. Though she continued writing, fewer than five new poems were published after her marriage. At the end of her life Wheatley was working as a servant, and she died in poverty.

Two books issued posthumously were Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley (1834)—in which Margaretta Matilda Odell, a collateral descendant of Susanna Wheatley, provides a short biography of Phillis as a preface to a collection of her poems—and Letters of Phillis Wheatley, the Negro Slave-Poet of Boston (1864). Wheatley’s work was frequently cited by abolitionists to combat the charge of innate intellectual inferiority among blacks and to promote educational opportunities for African Americans.

Struggles in Later Life

Wheatley had traveled to London to promote her poems and received medical treatment for a health ailment that she had been battling. After her return to Boston, Wheatley’s life changed significantly. While ultimately freed from slavery, she was devastated by the deaths of several Wheatley family members, including Susanna (d. 1774) and John (d. 1778).

In 1778, Wheatley married a free African American from Boston, John Peters, with whom she had three children, all of whom died in infancy. Their marriage proved to be a struggle, with the couple battling constant poverty. Ultimately, Wheatley was forced to find work as a maid in a boarding house and lived in squalid, horrifying conditions.

Wheatley did continue to write, but the growing tensions with the British and, ultimately, the Revolutionary War, weakened enthusiasm for her poems. While she contacted various publishers, she was unsuccessful in finding support for a second volume of poetry.

Phillis Wheatley died in her early 30s in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 5, 1784.