To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African Illustrated by Olaudah Equiano (1789)

A contemporary of Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano was an enslaved African who bought his freedom and lived in London. Like Wheatley, Equiano published literature that was wildly popular during his life and was used by abolitionists to support their cause. Unlike Wheatley, Equiano filled his autobiography with an explicitly abolitionist message, describing the horrors of slavery and advocating for legal reform. This difference in topic and message illuminates why Wheatley’s perceived silences have historically been judged so harshly.

Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave by Margaretta Matilda Odell (1834)

Odell, who claimed to be a collateral descendant of Susanna Wheatley, wrote a biography of Wheatley 50 years after the poet’s death. For two centuries, this biography was treated as fact, though modern scholars have concluded that it is factually inaccurate, depicting Wheatley as a sentimental heroine while ignoring the horrors of slavery. These misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies informed the academic understanding of Wheatley and her poetry until recent efforts to recover Wheatley’s story from history.

“How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History” by Elizabeth Winkler (2020)

Winkler’s article explains how misconceptions of Odell’s biography have obscured an accurate understanding of Wheatley’s life and her poetry. It considers the recent critical re-evaluation of Wheatley.

Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage by Vincent Carretta (2011)

This first full-length biography of Wheatley reclaims her life from the margins, removes the misrepresentations and inaccuracies of earlier biographies, and puts her life and poetry in its historical context. Carretta includes new details about Wheatley’s origins, her childhood, and her marriage to John Peters; and the role Wheatley played in producing, marketing and distributing her writing. This book also includes previously unpublished poems.

Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics by John C. Shields (2010)

Shields argues for Wheatley’s position in the canon of great American writers. Instead of only considering what influenced her, Shields describes Wheatley’s influence on Romantic European poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

“Phillis Wheatley’s Vocation and the Paradox of the ‘Afric Muse'” by Paula Bennett (2020)

This article considers how Wheatley used Neoclassical conventions to challenge, maybe even rage, against the racial and political issues in 18th century America. Bennett argues that her use of Neoclassical allusions, Christian imagery, and African themes reflects a paradoxical identity as an enslaved African and an American poet, which has perplexed readers and scholars in the years since.