Phillis Wheatley, African American Literary Foremother

Phillis Wheatley 1753-1784

Phillis Wheatley as portrayed by Scipio Moorhead in the frontispiece to her edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. 

"It is important to remember the task that Wheatley had before her when she undertook a career as a black woman poet in a white man's country. Wheatley had first to write her way into American literature before she or any other black writer could claim a special mission and purpose for African American literature. She had no models other than European Americans for her poetry, and she could not assume that her white readers would want to know what a slave woman thought or felt unless she could demonstrate her capacity to express her ideas and feelings in a manner sanctioned by the dominant culture. In response to these conditions, Wheatley adopted a literary persona and style that affirmed her seriousness as an African American artist and created a precedent on which subsequent black poets could build with confidence" (Gates, et al. 215). 

Indeed, Phillis Wheatley faced formidable opposition from her 

white readership when she first embarked on her career as the first African American poet. Wheatley lived and wrote during a time in which most white European Americans assumed that Africans 
were intellectually inferior. Scholar and logician David Hume 
asserted that “I am apt to suspect the negroes, and in general all theother species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There 
never was a civilized nation of any other complexion other than 
white.” 

Other culturally prominent individuals of her time discounted her 
work as poetry. Thomas Jefferson once quipped of Wheatley that 
“Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry Religion indeed has produced a Phillis Wheatley; but it could not 
produce a poet...The compositions published under her name are 
below dignity of criticism”(1).

Sold into slavery at the age of "between seven and eight," to a 
prominent Bostonian businessman, John Wheatley, Phillis 
Wheatley was so christened for the slave ship Phillis that 
transported her from what is now Gambia to New England 
(Gates 214). Wheatley purchased the child to become a servant to 
his wife, but the couple, who were self proclaimed "progressive" 
thinkers, were so enamored of the young girl and her intellect, that 
they reduced her household chores, often relegating them to other 
slaves of the household, while they cultivated young Phillis's 
education. Phillis developed an early affection for the writings of 
Homer, Virgil, Alexander Pope, and John Milton, as well as a 
facility with Classical languages. By the age of twelve, she was 
able to parse these languages, along with difficult Scriptural 
passages--the latter forming the greatest influence on her poetry.

While American reading audiences were often incredulous and 
resistant to the notion of an African (female) slave's intellect, 
Phillis's work was initially rejected in the United States. The 
Wheatleys took her to England, where the social climate was 
considerably more accepting. The journey to the United Kingdom 
proved beneficial, as the climate soothed the girl's respiratory 
troubles, and her book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, 
Religious and Moral was published in London.

Phyllis later married a man named Peter, about whom very little is known, save for the couple never enjoyed the wealth and success 
that Phillis's literary career had garnered for her. By her thirties, 
Wheatley's life had taken a dramatic turn, landing her as a scullery maid in a boarding house. She died in 1784.

Though her career as a poet was brief, African American scholars 
and writers have lauded Wheatley for her monumental contribution to African American letters. Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and 
Alice Walker, among many others refer to Wheatley for inspiration, and name her as one of the most prominent and revered literary 
foremothers of African American, particularly African American,  women's literature.

Here is a wonderfully informative segment on Wheatley from the 
series, Great American Authors.