Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (about 1753–1784) was the first African American author to publish a book of poetry. Kidnapped in West Africa as a child, she was sold in Boston in 1761 to the family of John Wheatley, who named her after the ship that had brought her. She learned English, Latin and the classics, and her elegy on the evangelist George Whitefield made her known on both sides of the Atlantic. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London in 1773, and she was freed soon after. In 1776 she met George Washington, to whom she had addressed a poem. She died in poverty in Boston.