At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of Afr

The extraordinary writings of Phillis Wheatley, a formerly enslaved woman turned published poet In 1761, a young girl arrived in Boston on a ship of enslaved pe

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) was an American freed slave and poet who wrote the first book of poetry by an African-American. Sold into a slavery in West Af

"This book very conclusively debunks the over two-hundred-year-old conventional wisdom that Wheatley owes her poetic sensibilities to Alexander Pope. ... It wil