Poetry

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

by Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was taken from West Africa as a child, enslaved in Boston, and published this book of poems in London in 1773, when she was about twenty. It was the first book of poems by an African American woman. It had to carry a statement signed by eighteen Boston men that she had written it herself.

The librarian

Read it in the Library After Dark Or read it as plain text

Reading time

About an hour

Where to find it

The African Reading Room

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #409. In the public domain in the United States.