Phillis Wheatley collection, [ca. 1757-1773].

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Phillis Wheatley collection, [ca. 1757-1773].

https://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/wheatley796/

The collection consists of two eighteenth-century copybooks from Boston, Massachusetts from circa 1754-1773. The copybooks contain unattributed and attributed verse including poetry published in newspapers and magazines and poetry attributed to William Shakespeare, John Dryden, Peter Motteaux, William Pinkington, and Jonathan Swift. Of particular interest is the larger of the two copybooks which includes a previously unpublished variant of Phillis Wheatley's poem, "A Hymn to Humanity," which was first published in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, September 1773). The poem, dated December 12, 1773, contains significant textual changes and identifies for the first time who the poem was dedicated to.

.25 linear ft. : (1 box)

eng, Latn

Emory University. Special Collections and Archives

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SNAC Resource ID: 8233362

Emory University. Special Collections and Archives

Related Entities

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Wheatley, Phillis, c. 1753-1784

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6998x2t (person)

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784), first Black woman poet in America, was brought as an African slave in about 1761 to Boston, Mass., where she was purchased by John Wheatley. Educated in the Wheatley household, first by Wheatley's wife Susannah and later by his daughter Mary, Phillis Wheatley began writing poems in her early teens. It was through her published poetry that she became a member of Boston's literati and travelled briefly to England, returning in 1773 during Mrs. Wheatley's final illn...