14/02/2026
Inspiration
At 7 years old, she spoke no English. At 14, her poetry was published in newspapers across two continents.
Around 1753, somewhere in West Africa—most likely in present-day Gambia or Senegal—a girl was born whose name we will never know. Her exact birth date, her original name, even her parents' names have been lost to history, erased by the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade.
But we know what she became.
In 1761, when she was approximately 7 or 8 years old, this small, sickly child was kidnapped by slave traders, forced onto a ship called the Phillis, and transported across the Atlantic Ocean. On July 11, 1761, the ship arrived in Boston, and the terrified child—who spoke no English and was losing her baby teeth—was sold at auction.
A wealthy Boston merchant and tailor named John Wheatley purchased her as a domestic servant for his wife, Susanna. They named her Phillis, after the ship that had stolen her from her homeland, and gave her their surname, as was common practice with enslaved people.
The Wheatleys expected a household servant. They got a genius.
The Education That Changed Everything
Susanna Wheatley quickly realized that young Phillis possessed an extraordinary mind. She began writing on walls with chalk—an unusual behavior for any child, let alone an enslaved one who had never been exposed to written language.
In a decision that was radical for 1761—when most enslaved people were forbidden to read, and when even free women received little formal education—the Wheatleys made a choice: they would educate Phillis.
Susanna, along with the Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter Mary and son Nathaniel, became Phillis's tutors. They taught her to read and write English. Then they went further.
Within just sixteen months of her arrival in Boston, Phillis Wheatley could read the most difficult passages of the Bible. By age 12, she was reading the Greek and Latin classics—Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Homer—in their original languages. She studied the works of John Milton and Alexander Pope. She learned history, geography, and astronomy.
Recognizing her extraordinary literary talent, the Wheatleys relieved Phillis of most domestic duties so she could focus on her studies and writing. This education was unprecedented—not just for an enslaved person, but for any woman of that era.
And Phillis Wheatley did more than absorb knowledge. She created art.
A Poet Emerges
At age 13 or 14, Phillis heard a remarkable story while serving at the Wheatley family dinner table. Two men named Hussey and Coffin from Nantucket had narrowly escaped being shipwrecked off Cape Cod during a terrible storm.
Inspired by their tale of survival, the young poet wrote "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin."
On December 21, 1767, the Newport Mercury newspaper in Rhode Island published her poem—making it likely the first poem by an enslaved African American ever published in the American colonies.
Phillis Wheatley was 13 or 14 years old.
The poem demonstrates her already sophisticated command of neoclassical poetic forms and classical allusion. She invokes Greek gods—Boreas and Eolus—to describe the forces of wind and nature, and counsels the sailors to trust in "the Great Supreme, the Wise" rather than fear.
For a girl who had heard English for the first time just six years earlier, this was nothing short of astonishing.
Three years later, in 1770, Wheatley wrote an elegy titled "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield"—mourning a celebrated English minister. The poem was published as a broadside in Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, and London, bringing her international attention.
Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved teenager, had become famous on two continents.
The Struggle for Publication
By 1772, Wheatley had written enough poems to fill a book. She and the Wheatleys sought to publish "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" in Boston.
Every American publisher refused.
The reason was simple: Phillis Wheatley was Black, enslaved, and her poems challenged prevailing racist beliefs about African intellectual capacity. Colonial America was not ready to accept that an enslaved African woman could write sophisticated poetry.
But there was another problem: many people simply didn't believe she had written the poems herself.
In an extraordinary—and humiliating—examination, Phillis Wheatley was brought before a panel of 18 prominent Boston men, including John Hancock, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and other luminaries. They interrogated her, testing her knowledge and her authorship.
She passed their examination. The panel signed an attestation confirming that the poems were indeed her work—a document that would be included in her book's preface.
Still, no American publisher would print her work.
London Breakthrough
In May 1773, Phillis traveled to London with the Wheatleys' son Nathaniel, ostensibly for her health but really to seek publication. In London—ironically, where a recent legal decision had found slavery contrary to English law—she was celebrated.
Phillis Wheatley met with prominent British society members, including Benjamin Franklin and members of the nobility. She had an audience scheduled with King George III, though she had to return to Boston before it could take place when she learned Susanna Wheatley had fallen gravely ill.
But before she left London, her book was published.
On September 1, 1773, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" appeared in print. Twenty-year-old Phillis Wheatley became:
The first African American woman to publish a book of poetry
The first enslaved person to publish a book of poetry
Only the third American woman (of any race) to publish a book of poetry
Voltaire, the great French philosopher, wrote to friends that Wheatley's work proved that Black people could write poetry—a statement that reveals both how rare such acknowledgment was and how revolutionary her achievement was.
Freedom and Tragedy
Shortly after the book's publication, the Wheatleys freed Phillis from slavery—possibly under pressure from her English admirers, or as a condition Phillis herself set for returning from London.
But freedom in 1773 Boston was precarious for a Black woman, no matter how famous.
Susanna Wheatley died in March 1774. Phillis grieved deeply, writing to a friend that Susanna had been like "a parent, sister, or brother" to her—acknowledging the complex, contradictory nature of their relationship.
In 1775, during the Siege of Boston, Wheatley wrote "To His Excellency George Washington," praising the general who would become the first U.S. president. Washington was so moved that he invited her to visit him at his Cambridge headquarters in 1776.
In April 1778, John Wheatley died. One month later, Phillis married John Peters, a free Black man who had worked as a grocer, merchant, lawyer, and physician. Peters was educated and ambitious, but he struggled to find work that matched his self-perceived dignity and eventually drove the family into poverty.
Phillis tried to publish a second volume of poetry that would include 33 new poems and 13 letters. Despite her international fame, she could not secure funding. The racism that had prevented her first book's American publication still persisted—compounded now by the disruptions of the Revolutionary War.
The couple had three children. All three died in infancy.
Unable to support herself through writing, Phillis Wheatley—once celebrated in London's finest salons—took work as a scullery maid at a boarding house, doing the heavy domestic labor she had been spared as a young girl.
On December 5, 1784, Phillis Wheatley died in that boarding house. She was 31 years old.
Her sick infant son died the same day and was buried with her. Their burial place is unknown.
The Legacy
Phillis Wheatley's life was tragically short. She lived only 31 years, and most of those years were spent in bo***ge or poverty.
But in that brief time, she fundamentally challenged America's racist assumptions about Black intellectual capacity. She proved—to anyone willing to see the evidence—that African people could master the most sophisticated forms of Western literature.
Her poetry, steeped in classical allusion and biblical imagery, rarely mentioned her personal experiences of enslavement directly. Some critics have faulted her for this. But Phillis Wheatley understood something profound: by mastering the literary forms most valued by her oppressors, by proving herself their equal or superior in the very measures they claimed demonstrated intelligence, she struck a blow against slavery itself.
As she wrote in her most famous poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America":
"Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train."
It was a rebuke wrapped in Christian language—a reminder that Black people deserved the same consideration, the same respect, the same opportunities as anyone else.
Today, Phillis Wheatley is honored with a statue on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue, alongside Abigail Adams and Lucy Stone. Multiple schools bear her name. Her work is studied by scholars and students worldwide.
And every time a Black woman publishes a book of poetry, she walks a path that Phillis Wheatley—kidnapped from Africa at 7, enslaved, denied publication in her own country, examined by skeptics who couldn't believe she had written her own words—helped clear.
From a child who spoke no English to a published poet celebrated across continents, Phillis Wheatley's journey reminds us that genius can emerge from anywhere, under any circumstances—and that the human spirit's capacity for creativity and excellence cannot be extinguished, even by the cruelty of enslavement.
As she wrote in one of her poems: The desire to excel burns bright in every human heart, regardless of the chains that bind the body.
