biography
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (c.1753–84)
|
| biography:
| Poet, possibly born in Senegal, Africa. She was sold in slavery to the John Wheatley family in Boston, USA (1761), was educated by them, even learning Latin and Greek, and by the age of 13 was composing poems so sophisticated that many people charged she could not have written them. Sent to London with the Wheatley's son (1778), she was received in society, published her first volume of poems, then returned to Boston. She was freed, married, and had three children, none of whom survived her. A collection of her poetry and prose, Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, was printed in 1834. Although her poems are now regarded as generally derivative in their Neoclassical manner, they were often cited in the 19th-c by those pointing out that African-Americans needed only to be educated in order to become the equal of their fellow Americans. |
|
|
