Gateway Chronicle 2022

PHILLIS WHEATLEY
Matthew M, 2.3
Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753,
probably in Senegal or Gambia (the date
and place of her birth are not documented).
She was kidnapped from West Africa when
she was seven and was sold as a slave in
Boston. She was bought by John
Wheatley, who was a wealthy Boston
merchant, in August 1761, as a slave for
his wife, Susanna. Phillis was in a bad
state, and in fragile health. She was nearly
naked and just had some dirty carpet to
cover her. The captain of the slave ship
thought that she was about to die, so sold
her very cheaply to John Wheatley.
The Wheatley’s taught her to read and
write, and she was soon absorbed in the
Bible, astronomy, geography, history,
literature and Greek and Latin classics.
She soon mastered English and caused a
stir among scholars after translating a tale
from Ovid, a Roman poet. She started to
publish poems, her first at the age of 13,
and began to receive international acclaim,
especially when she published the
Whitefield Elegy.
When she was 18, Wheatley made
advertisements in Boston newspapers for
her poems. However, the Americans did
not want to support literature by an African.
Instead, she turned to London, where she
gave one of her poems to Selina Hastings,
Countess of Huntingdon, who was a
supporter of the abolition of slavery. Selina
Hastings instructed a bookseller to begin
correspondence with Wheatley.
Phillis Wheatley left for London due to a
chronic asthma condition on the 8 th May
1771. Her works were being welcomed by
many notable people. She soon published
the first volume of poetry by an African
American in modern times, in London,
‘Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and
Moral’. This included a preface which had
seventeen Boston men asserting that she
had written the poems in it, after she had to
defend her authorship as many colonists
did not believe that she had written such
outstanding poetry. After this was
published, the Wheatleys freed her from
slavery. She also sent one of her works to
the future President, George Washington,
which resulted in an invitation for her to
visit him in Massachusetts.
Sadly for her, Susanna Wheatley died in
1774, and John Wheatley died in 1778. On
1 April 1778, she married John Peters, who
eventually abandoned her. She had three
children, all dying in infancy. They were
constantly battling poverty. Eventually, she
began to fall sick. She was forced to work
as a maid and lived in horrifying conditions.
However, she continued to write poems,
but she was unsuccessful in an attempt to
find support for a second volume of poetry,
and even her first volume of poetry was not
published in America until two years after
her death. She died on the 5 th December
1784, in her early 30s, alone.
27 | G ateway Chronicle