Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England

London: Printed for A. Bell, bookseller, Aldgate; and sold by Messrs. Cox and Berry, King-street, Boston, 1773

Phillis Wheatley

1753-1784

Octavo

Phillis Wheatley was taken from her home on the Senegambian coast as a child and sold to a family in Boston. She received an education in English and Latin and, with the help of her supporters, secured a London printer for her highly successful and widely reviewed poems. The frontispiece portrait was included at the suggestion of Wheatley’s patron, the Countess of Huntingdon. It may be based on a work by Scipio Moorhead, an enslaved African man living in Boston, about whom Wheatley wrote one of her poems. However, it is also possible that Wheatley sat for her portrait in London. She is portrayed at a writing table, gazing heavenward with pen in hand. Depictions of female authors were extremely unusual in this period, and this image may have encouraged the appearance of subsequent female author portraits.

Ignatius Sancho was among Wheatley’s early literary admirers. “Phyllis’ poems do credit to nature,” he wrote, “and put art—merely as art—to the blush.” The editions exhibited here were published in London (1773) and Boston (1838).

Vanderbilt 175

http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/3401720

Related Media

[Unknown artist], Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston (frontispiece to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral) [Unknown artist], Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston (frontispiece to Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral). Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,

Title Page for Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral Title Page for Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Vanderbilt 175