Phillis Wheatley

Brought from West Africa to Boston as a child, Phillis Wheatley was enslaved by the Wheatley family and received an unusual literary education. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in London in 1773 after Boston authorities demanded evidence that she had written the poems herself.

Wheatley gained freedom but struggled economically after the Revolution. Her poetry used classical, Christian and political language to assert intellectual authority and to engage questions of liberty, slavery and the emerging American republic.