50 Fun Facts About Phillis Wheatley

What gave the poet Phillis Wheatley her first name when she reached Boston as a child in 1761?

The ship that carried her from West Africa was a slave vessel called the Phillis, and the Boston family who bought her on arrival supplied the surname.

Which general invited Phillis Wheatley to his Cambridge headquarters after she sent him a poem of praise in 1775?

George Washington told her the lines were striking proof of her great poetical talents, and said he had not printed them himself only for fear of looking vain.

Copies of Phillis Wheatley's first book crossed the Atlantic in 1773 aboard a vessel soon targeted in which protest?

The Boston Tea Party raiders destroyed only the tea, so the copies of her poems sharing the same hold came ashore unharmed.

Which Founding Father's Notes on the State of Virginia called Phillis Wheatley's poems below the dignity of criticism?

Thomas Jefferson allowed that religion had produced her but denied it could produce a poet, even as abolitionists were citing her verse as proof of Black intellect.

The engraved portrait facing the title page of Phillis Wheatley's 1773 book shows the young poet doing what?

Writing at a desk, quill in one hand and chin resting on the other, she sits for what appears to be the first portrayal of a woman writing in American history.

What does line one of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' say brought her from home?

Mercy is the poem's first surprise: she credits it, not the traders who kidnapped her, with the crossing, then spends her last four lines rebuking prejudice.

What happened to Phillis Wheatley in Boston within weeks of her return from London in the autumn of 1773?

She was freed, in her own words, at the desire of her friends in England, where admirers had asked why so celebrated a poet was still enslaved.

Which future president of the Continental Congress signed the note vouching that Phillis Wheatley wrote her poems?

John Hancock was one of eighteen Boston worthies, the royal governor among them, whose signed attestation was printed at the front of her book.

Phillis Wheatley's early poem 'To the University of Cambridge, in New-England' lectures the students of which college?

Harvard's students, given every chance she was denied, get a sermon from an enslaved teenager urging them to shun sin and use their privileges well.

Which American statesman, then a colonial agent in London, called on Phillis Wheatley there in 1773 to offer his help?

Benjamin Franklin left suspecting her master resented the visit, yet six years later she planned to dedicate her second book of poems to him.

Phillis Wheatley won fame on both sides of the Atlantic in 1770 with a poem mourning which travelling evangelist?

George Whitefield had preached to vast crowds across the colonies, and her tribute sold as a broadside in Boston, Newport and Philadelphia before reaching London.

Which Methodist noblewoman backed Phillis Wheatley's 1773 book and received its dedication, yet never met her?

The Countess of Huntingdon was away in Wales and unwell during the poet's London summer, so patron and protegee knew each other only by letter.

In 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', what does Phillis Wheatley say she once neither sought nor knew?

Redemption is the poem's hinge: four lines of thanks for her conversion give way to four that turn on believers who scorn her race.

Which biblical figure does Phillis Wheatley name in a simile near the end of 'On Being Brought from Africa to America'?

Cain turns up in the phrase 'black as Cain', which she follows at once with the claim that such souls may be refined and saved.

In line five of 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', which word does Phillis Wheatley use for her race's colour?

Sable, a word for a prized dark fur and for black in heraldry, lends dignity to the very colour the next line's scoffers call diabolic.

According to the last line of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', refined souls may join what?

The angelic train, heaven's procession, is promised to converts of every colour, which turns the poem's ending into a quiet claim to equality.

Which rhyme scheme do the eight lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' follow?

AABBCCDD means four rhymed pairs, the neat closed couplets that were her favourite form and the height of fashion in English verse of her century.

The lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' are written in which metre?

Iambic pentameter, five rising beats to the line, was the workhorse of serious English verse and the measure she chose for most of her couplets.

Which chronic illness was one reason the Wheatleys sent Phillis Wheatley on a sea voyage to London in 1773?

Asthma troubled her for years, but the trip's main purpose was her book, which the family thought stood a better chance with London printers than with Boston's.

More than a third of Phillis Wheatley's known poems, many requested by grieving Boston families, belong to which genre?

Elegies were her staple: friends and even strangers who had lost a child or a spouse employed her to turn their grief into verse.

In the first line of Phillis Wheatley's poem 'On Virtue', the speaker addresses virtue as a bright what?

Jewel sets the tone: virtue is a treasure she strives to comprehend, and within five lines she gives up trying to measure its height.

According to the opening lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Virtue', what is higher than a fool can reach?

Wisdom lies beyond her, she admits, so she stops trying to fathom virtue's depths and instead asks it to hover near and guide her.

Which personified quality, called celestial, does Phillis Wheatley ask Virtue to lead along in the poem 'On Virtue'?

Chastity arrives with a sacred retinue descending in glory from the orbs above, one of several courtly images that cast Virtue as a queen.

Through which stage of her life does Phillis Wheatley beg Virtue to attend her in the poem 'On Virtue'?

Her youthful years are when temptation looms largest, so she asks to be kept from what she calls the false joys of time and guided to endless bliss.

Which sound shakes the heavenly plain in the opening couplet of Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening'?

Thunder opens the poem as the sun leaves the eastern main, but the storm is gone within a line, replaced by purling streams, birdsong and spring scent.

Phillis Wheatley ends 'An Hymn to the Evening' by silencing her song until which classical goddess rises?

Aurora, Roman goddess of the dawn, was a favourite of hers: she also hails the goddess by name at the start of her companion poem, 'An Hymn to the Morning'.

In the last couplet of Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening', what does Night use to seal her drowsy eyes?

A leaden sceptre makes Night a monarch whose heavy rule ends the song, royal imagery she also gives the sun, her 'king of day'.

In 'An Hymn to the Evening', Phillis Wheatley prays that human breasts may glow with virtue as living what?

Temples is her image for people as God's dwelling places on earth, glowing from within just as the western sky glows deepest red at sunset.

From whose wing does the incense of the blooming spring exhale in Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening'?

The zephyr's wing, the soft west wind of classical poetry, spreads the scent once the storm has passed and the birds renew their notes.

Which Muse does Phillis Wheatley call on to wake the sacred lyre in her poem 'An Hymn to the Morning'?

Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, is asked to play while her sisters fan the fire, yet the hymn breaks off once the sun's beams grow too strong.

Phillis Wheatley's 1768 poem to King George III thanks him for the repeal of which hated colonial tax?

The Stamp Act repeal is the favour she names in a footnote, before closing on the pointed wish that a monarch's smile might set his subjects free.

Which goddess-like name for America did Phillis Wheatley use in her 1775 poem to the commander of the Continental Army?

Columbia had been only a name until her poem gave it a goddess's form, with olive and laurel binding her golden hair.

Which Pennsylvania Magazine editor printed Phillis Wheatley's poem to the Continental Army's commander in April 1776?

Thomas Paine ran her verses within months of his own Common Sense, the pamphlet that had set the colonies arguing about independence.

Which enslaved Long Island poet addressed 21 stanzas to Miss Phillis Wheatley in 1778, each paired with a Bible verse?

Jupiter Hammon, the first African American poet published in North America, never met her but urged her on in her faith from wartime Hartford.

Which English poet, famed for translating Homer, was the chief model for Phillis Wheatley's polished rhyming couplets?

Alexander Pope's version of Homer gave her a taste for Greek myth as well as a verse line, and his polish can be heard in nearly every poem she wrote.

Which work by John Milton did London merchant Brook Watson present to Phillis Wheatley during her 1773 visit?

Paradise Lost came from a man who would one day be Lord Mayor of London, one of many dignitaries who received the young poet that summer.

Which enslaved Boston artist, often credited with her portrait, did Phillis Wheatley hail in a poem to a young painter?

Scipio Moorhead appears only as initials in her title; it is her one surviving poem addressed to another Black person and her only one about making art.

Which Roman playwright, footnoted by Phillis Wheatley as 'an African by birth', does she envy in her book's first poem?

Terence, by ancient accounts brought to Rome as a slave, is the one African she finds among the classics, and she asks the Muses why he alone was favoured.

Phillis Wheatley's long poem drawn from Ovid and a Richard Wilson painting tells of which grieving queen of myth?

Niobe boasted of her children and saw them slain by Apollo; in retelling Ovid's tale the poet added lines of her own to heighten the drama.

In her poem to Britain's colonial secretary, Phillis Wheatley traces her love of freedom to which childhood experience?

Being torn from her father is one of her rare glimpses of her own past: she imagines his sorrow and prays that others may never feel such tyranny.

Phillis Wheatley shares the 2003 Boston Women's Memorial with suffragist Lucy Stone and which Massachusetts First Lady?

Abigail Adams stands near her at street level on Commonwealth Avenue; the sculptor brought all three women down off their pedestals on purpose.

Which Old Testament story does Phillis Wheatley retell at length in a poem named for a warrior from Gath?

David and Goliath becomes a small epic in her hands: 'Goliath of Gath' opens by calling on the Muses, as Homer and Virgil do, before the armies meet.

At the close of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Imagination', which season forbids her to aspire and brings the song to an end?

Winter and its northern tempests chill her fancy just as it has pictured blooming flowers and a golden sunrise, so the flight ends in cold fact.

John Wheatley's 1772 letter, printed in Phillis Wheatley's book, says she had made some progress in which language?

Latin was her own inclination, the letter says; she had mastered English within sixteen months of landing with no knowledge of it at all.

Which French philosopher wrote in a letter that Phillis Wheatley's work proved Black people could write fine verse?

Voltaire called her lines very good English verse in 1774, at a time when thinkers such as Hume and Kant denied Africans any gift for the arts.

Which free Black Bostonian, said to have been a grocer, baker and barber, did Phillis Wheatley marry in 1778?

John Peters is also said to have styled himself a doctor and practised law; she took his surname and published her last poems as Phillis Peters.

The riddle poem that closes Phillis Wheatley's 1773 book spells out which city, taken by Britain in 1759?

Quebec is spelled by the first letters of her six answers, Quail, Unicorn and Emerald among them, in reply to a rebus set by a writer known only by initials.

Which new British secretary for the colonies did Phillis Wheatley hail in a poem as a friend to freedom?

The Earl of Dartmouth, for whom Dartmouth College in New Hampshire is named, held the post until 1775 and welcomed her in person in London.

Phillis Wheatley's 1774 letter against slavery, widely reprinted in newspapers, was addressed to which Mohegan minister?

Samson Occom read there that God has planted a love of freedom in every human breast, and that it lives in the enslaved as surely as in anyone.

By what name does Phillis Wheatley call herself when warning students off sin in 'To the University of Cambridge'?

An Ethiop is the poem's voice of experience: she has left what she calls a land of errors, and tells the privileged that sin is their greatest foe.