The Poems of Phillis Wheatley: With Letters and a Memoir

By Phillis Wheatley

Born in Africa in 1753, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped at the age of seven and sold into slavery. At nineteen, she became the first black American poet to publish a book, Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral, on which this volume is based. Wheatley's poetry created a sensation throughout the English-speaking world, and the young poet read her work in aristocratic drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic. The London Chronicle went so far as to declare her "perhaps one of the greatest instances of pure, unassisted genius that the world ever produced."
Wheatley's elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses into the origins of African-American literary traditions. Most of the poems express the effects of her religious and classical New England education, consisting of elegies for the departed and odes to Christian salvation. This edition of Wheatley's historic works includes letters and a biographical note written by one of the poet's descendants. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative: "On Being Brought from Africa to America."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486115290

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was an African American poet. Born in West Africa, she was stolen into slavery as a young girl and purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston. Raised to work as a servant for Susanna Wheatley, she was tutored by the Wheatley children in reading and writing, learning Greek and Latin by the age of twelve and writing her first poem at fourteen. Recognizing her talent, the Wheatley family sought publication for her work, eventually moving Phillis to London at the age of twenty in search of wealthy patrons. In 1773, her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral became the first book of poetry ever published by an African American author, earning her worldwide fame and the acclaim of such figures as George Washington, Jupiter Hammon, Voltaire, and John Paul Jones. That same year, she was emancipated by the Wheatleys, and in 1778 she married a free black businessman named John Peters. Her final years were plagued with illness, debt, and manual labor; her death at the age of thirty-one cut short the improbable life of a true pioneer of American literature.

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Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2010, is an unabridged republication of Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, originally published in 1834 by George W. Light, Boston.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wheatley, Phillis, 1753–1784.

[Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley]

The poems of Phillis Wheatley : with letters and a biographical note.

p. cm.

Includes memoir by Margaretta Matilda Odell.

Originally published: Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley.

Boston : Geo. W. Light, 1834.

9780486115290

ISBN-10: 0-486-47593-X

I. Odell, Margaretta Matilda. II. Title.

PS866.W5 2010

811’.1—dc22

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

47593X01

www.doverpublications.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

TO THE PUBLIC

PREFACE

POEMS

To Mæcenas

On Virtue

On Being Brought From Africa to America

To the University of Cambridge, in New-England

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. 1768

On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell. 1769

On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield.—1770

On the Death of a Young Lady of Five Years of Age

On the Death of a Young Gentleman

To a Lady on Her Husband’s Death

Goliath of Gath - 1 SAM. CHAP. 17th.

Thoughts on the Works of Providence

To a Lady, on the Death of Three Relations

To a Clergyman, on the Death of His Lady

Hymn to the Morning

Hymn to the Evening

Isaiah, 63rd Chap. 1st and 8th verses

On Recollection

On Imagination

A Funeral Poem, - On the death of C***** E*****, an infant of twelve months

To Captain H******D, - Of the 65th Regiment

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth - His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c.

Ode to Neptune, - On Mrs. W——’s Voyage to England

To a Lady, - On Her Coming to North America with Her Son, for the Recovery of Her Health

To a Lady, - On Her Remarkable Preservation in a Hurricane, in North Carolina

To a Lady and Her Children, - On the Death of Her Son and Their Brother

To A Gentleman and Lady, - On the Death of the Lady’s Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, Aged One Year

On the Death of Dr. Samuel Marshall, 1771

To a Gentleman, - On His Voyage to Great Britain for the Recovery of His Health

To the Rev. Dr. Thomas Amory, - On Reading His Sermons on Daily Devotion, in which that Duty is Recommended and Assisted

On the Death of J. C.—an Infant

A Hymn to Humanity - To S. P. G., Esq.

To the Hon. T. H. Esq., - On the Death of His Daughter

Niobe in Distress for Her Children Slain by Apollo - From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 6th, and from a view of the Painting of Mr. Richard Wilson

To S. M., a Young African Painter, - On Seeing His Works

To His Honor the Lieut. Governor, - On the Death of His Lady, March 24, 1773

A Farewell to America - To Mrs. S.W.

A Rebus—By J. B.

An Answer to the Rebus - By the Author of These Poems

MEMOIR

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 28, 1776

MISS PHILLIS—

Your favor of the 26th of October did not reach my hands till the middle of December. Time enough, you will say, to have given an answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continually interposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for the delay, and plead my excuse for the seeming but not real neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed: and however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents; in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints.

If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations. I am, with great respect, your obedient, humble servant,

GEO. WASHINGTON

DEDICATION

To

The Right Honorable,

THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON,

THE FOLLOWING POEMS

ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

BY HER MUCH OBLIGED, VERY HUMBLE,

AND DEVOTED SERVANT,

PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

Boston, June 12, 1773

TO THE PUBLIC

As it has been repeatedly suggested to the Publisher, by persons who have seen the Manuscript, that numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the writings of Phillis, he has procured the following Attestation, from the most respectable characters in Boston, that none might have the least ground for disputing their original:

We, whose names are under-written, do assure the World, that the Poems specified in the following page¹ were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro girl, who was but a few years since brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the disadvantage of serving as a slave in a family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best judges, and is thought qualified to write them.

His Excellency, Thomas Hutchison, Governor,

The Hon. Andrew Oliver, Lieutenant Governor,

N.B. The original Attestation, signed by the above Gentlemen, may be seen by applying to Archibald Bell, Bookseller, No. 8, Aldgate