Phillis Wheatley
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50 free Phillis Wheatley trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped in West Africa as a small child, sold on a Boston dock in 1761, and within a dozen years had published a book of poetry in London that made her famous on two continents. She did it while enslaved, in a second language, in a colony where many refused to believe an African girl could write verse at all. This quiz covers her life and her work. The biography questions follow her from the Wheatley household to her London summer, her famous admirers and detractors, her marriage and her hard last years. The poetry questions look closely at the poems most often taught, including On Being Brought from Africa to America, On Virtue and An Hymn to the Evening: their imagery, their form and the lines readers remember. It is written for students revising her poems, for teachers who want a ready set of questions, and for anyone curious about the woman who opened the door for African American literature. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What gave the poet Phillis Wheatley her first name when she reached Boston as a child in 1761?
The ship that carried her
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.
Q 02Which general invited Phillis Wheatley to his Cambridge headquarters after she sent him a poem of praise in 1775?
George Washington
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.
Q 03Copies of Phillis Wheatley's first book crossed the Atlantic in 1773 aboard a vessel soon targeted in which protest?
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party raiders destroyed only the tea, so the copies of her poems sharing the same hold came ashore unharmed.
Q 04Which Founding Father's Notes on the State of Virginia called Phillis Wheatley's poems below the dignity of criticism?
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Q 05The engraved portrait facing the title page of Phillis Wheatley's 1773 book shows the young poet doing what?
Writing at a desk
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.
Q 06What does line one of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' say brought her from home?
Mercy
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.
Q 07What happened to Phillis Wheatley in Boston within weeks of her return from London in the autumn of 1773?
She was freed
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.
Q 08Which future president of the Continental Congress signed the note vouching that Phillis Wheatley wrote her poems?
John Hancock
John Hancock was one of eighteen Boston worthies, the royal governor among them, whose signed attestation was printed at the front of her book.
Q 09Phillis Wheatley's early poem 'To the University of Cambridge, in New-England' lectures the students of which college?
Harvard
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.
Q 10Which American statesman, then a colonial agent in London, called on Phillis Wheatley there in 1773 to offer his help?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin left suspecting her master resented the visit, yet six years later she planned to dedicate her second book of poems to him.
Q 11Phillis Wheatley won fame on both sides of the Atlantic in 1770 with a poem mourning which travelling evangelist?
George Whitefield
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.
Q 12Which Methodist noblewoman backed Phillis Wheatley's 1773 book and received its dedication, yet never met her?
The Countess of Huntingdon
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.
Q 13In 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', what does Phillis Wheatley say she once neither sought nor knew?
Q 21In the first line of Phillis Wheatley's poem 'On Virtue', the speaker addresses virtue as a bright what?
Jewel
Jewel sets the tone: virtue is a treasure she strives to comprehend, and within five lines she gives up trying to measure its height.
Q 22According to the opening lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Virtue', what is higher than a fool can reach?
Wisdom
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.
Q 23Which personified quality, called celestial, does Phillis Wheatley ask Virtue to lead along in the poem 'On Virtue'?
Chastity
Chastity arrives with a sacred retinue descending in glory from the orbs above, one of several courtly images that cast Virtue as a queen.
Redemption
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.
Q 14Which biblical figure does Phillis Wheatley name in a simile near the end of 'On Being Brought from Africa to America'?
Cain
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.
Q 15In line five of 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', which word does Phillis Wheatley use for her race's colour?
Sable
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.
Q 16According to the last line of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America', refined souls may join what?
The angelic train
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.
Q 17Which rhyme scheme do the eight lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' follow?
AABBCCDD
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.
Q 18The lines of Phillis Wheatley's 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' are written in which metre?
Iambic pentameter
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.
Q 19Which chronic illness was one reason the Wheatleys sent Phillis Wheatley on a sea voyage to London in 1773?
Asthma
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.
Q 20More than a third of Phillis Wheatley's known poems, many requested by grieving Boston families, belong to which genre?
Elegies
Elegies were her staple: friends and even strangers who had lost a child or a spouse employed her to turn their grief into verse.
Q 24Through which stage of her life does Phillis Wheatley beg Virtue to attend her in the poem 'On Virtue'?
Her youthful years
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.
Q 25Which sound shakes the heavenly plain in the opening couplet of Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening'?
Thunder
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.
Q 26Phillis Wheatley ends 'An Hymn to the Evening' by silencing her song until which classical goddess rises?
Aurora
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'.
Q 27In the last couplet of Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening', what does Night use to seal her drowsy eyes?
A leaden sceptre
A leaden sceptre makes Night a monarch whose heavy rule ends the song, royal imagery she also gives the sun, her 'king of day'.
Q 28In 'An Hymn to the Evening', Phillis Wheatley prays that human breasts may glow with virtue as living what?
Temples
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.
Q 29From whose wing does the incense of the blooming spring exhale in Phillis Wheatley's 'An Hymn to the Evening'?
The zephyr's
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.
Q 30Which Muse does Phillis Wheatley call on to wake the sacred lyre in her poem 'An Hymn to the Morning'?
Calliope
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.