Explore The Ohio State University Libraries Resources
The Ohio State University Libraries provides access to a wide variety of resources. This page features resources that can help you explore themes in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Author's Books
Wheatley, Phillis. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New York: Oxford University Press 1988.
Wheatley, Phillis and Vincent Carretta. Complete Writings: Phillis Wheatley. New York:Penguin Books 2001.
Wheatley Phillis and Vincent Carretta. The Writings of Phillis Wheatley. First edition First ed. Oxford University Press 2020.
Phillis Wheatley Peters
In 1773, Phillis Wheatley accomplished something that no other woman of her status had done. When her book of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, appeared, she became the first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published.
Born in Africa about 1753 and sold as a slave in Boston in 1761, Phillis was a small, sick child who caught the attention of John and Susanna Wheatley. Purchased as a domestic servant for Susanna, the small girl was named after the ship that brought her to Boston, the Phillis, and her master,
In 1773, Phillis, in continuously poor health, set off for London with her master’s son, Nathaniel. It was here that she was not only accepted, but adored—both for her poise and her literary work. It was also here that she met Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, a friend of Susanna Wheatley’s; the countess eventually funded the publication of Phillis’s book. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in London in late 1773, just as Phillis traveled back to Boston to tend to a gravely ill Susanna.
Even with her literary popularity at its all-time high, the years after the trip to London were difficult for Phillis. Although she was manumitted around the time of her book’s publication, freedom in 1774 in Boston proved incredibly difficult. Most of the Wheatley family died during 1774-78, and Phillis was unable to secure funding for another publication or sell her writing. There were glimmers of happiness; she married a free black man, John Peters, in 1778.
It is believed that none of their children survived infancy. The couple struggled with extreme poverty, and in 1785 Peters was placed in jail because of debt. Phillis continued to write—on subjects varying from biblical themes to the horrors of slavery—but was not able to support herself with these writings. (John C. Shields states that while most of these poems are lost, several were rediscovered in the 1970s and 1980s.) She took a job as a maid in a local boardinghouse, but she died on December 5, 1784.
