22 Facts About Phillis Wheatley

The Wheatleys died soon thereafter and Phillis Wheatley married John Peters, a poor grocer.

Phillis Wheatley-Peters died in poverty and obscurity at the age of 31.

Phillis Wheatley was given their last name of Wheatley, as was a common custom if any surname was used for enslaved people.

Strongly influenced by her readings of the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, Horace and Virgil, Phillis Wheatley began to write poetry.

In 1773, at the age of 20, Phillis accompanied Nathaniel Wheatley to London in part for her health, but primarily because Susanna believed Phillis would have a better chance of publishing her book of poems there than in the colonies.

Susanna Phillis Wheatley died in the spring of 1774, and John in 1778.

Shortly after, Phillis Wheatley met and married John Peters, an impoverished free black grocer.

Phillis Wheatley wrote a letter to Reverend Samson Occom, commending him on his ideas and beliefs stating that enslaved people should be given their natural-born rights in America.

Phillis Wheatley exchanged letters with the British philanthropist John Thornton, who discussed Phillis Wheatley and her poetry in correspondence with John Newton.

In 1779, Phillis Wheatley issued a proposal for a second volume of poems but was unable to publish it because she had lost her patrons after her emancipation; publication of books was often based on gaining subscriptions for guaranteed sales beforehand.

In 1768, Phillis Wheatley wrote "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty", in which she praised King George III for repealing the Stamp Act.

Phillis Wheatley's poetry expressed Christian themes, and many poems were dedicated to famous figures.

Phillis Wheatley seldom referred to her own life in her poems.

Phillis Wheatley had to defend her authorship of her poetry in court in 1772.

Phillis Wheatley was examined by a group of Boston luminaries, including John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and his lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver.

Hammon thought that Phillis Wheatley had succumbed to what he believed were pagan influences in her writing, and so his "Address" consisted of 21 rhyming quatrains, each accompanied by a related Bible verse, that he thought would compel Phillis Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life.

Phillis Wheatley repeated three primary elements: Christianity, classicism and hierophantic solar worship.

Phillis Wheatley notes that Sun is a homonym for Son, and that Wheatley intended a double reference to Christ.

Black literary scholars from the 1960s to the present in critiquing Phillis Wheatley's writing have noted the absence in it of her sense of identity as a black enslaved person.

In 1892 a Phyllis Phillis Wheatley Circle was formed in Greenville, Mississippi.

Phillis Wheatley is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

Phillis Wheatley was featured in "Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition" at the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge University during 2025, which told the stories of abolitionists such as Phillis Wheatley.