19 Facts About Phyllis Wheatley

Phyllis Wheatley was emancipated by her enslavers shortly after the publication of her book.

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

John and Susanna Phyllis Wheatley named her Phillis, after the ship that had transported her to America.

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

John Phyllis Wheatley was known as a progressive throughout New England; his family afforded Phillis an unprecedented education for an enslaved person, and one unusual for a woman of any race.

Related searches

Phillis Phyllis 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.

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

In 1779 Phyllis 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, Phyllis Wheatley wrote "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty", in which she praised King George III for repealing the Stamp Act.

In 1770 Phyllis Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to the evangelist George Whitefield.

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

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

Phyllis 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 Phyllis 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 Phyllis Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life.

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

Phyllis 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 Phyllis Wheatley's writing have noted the absence in it of her sense of identity as a black enslaved person.

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

Phyllis Wheatley is the subject of a project and play by British-Nigerian writer Ade Solanke entitled Phillis in London, which was showcased at the Greenwich Book Festival in June 2018.