The past two decades have seen a dramatic resurgence of interest in black women writers, as authors such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison have come to dominate the larger Afro-American literary landscape. Yet the works of the writers who founded and nurtured the black women's literary tradition--nineteenth-century Afro-American women--have remained buried in research libraries or in expensive hard-to-find reprints, often inaccessible to twentieth-century readers.
Oxford University Press, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of The New...

For nearly thirty-five years Julian Mason's The Poems of Phillis Wheatley (1966) has been the standard edition of the poems and letters of this young black poet of eighteenth-century Boston. This new edition has been extensively revised in light of Wheatley scholarship since its publication. It has been expanded to include all of the fifty-six poems and twenty-two letters now known to be by Wheatley, the significant variants of the poems, and the four Proposals for publication of her works, all of them annotated.

This edition contains the recently discovered poem "Ocean," new...

The poetry of America's first published black poet was published before the Revolutionary War and recognized throughout the English-speaking world. Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa, sold as a slave in America, and became a celebrity in Europe. This volume also contains a short memoir of her life.

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), the first black American to publish a book, was internationally famous during her short life. This edition, with an essay by the editor, restores her to her proper place in America's literary heritage.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Born in Africa in 1753, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped at the age of seven and sold into slavery. At nineteen, she became the first black American poet to publish a book, Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral, on which this volume is based. Wheatley's poetry created a sensation throughout the English-speaking world, and the young poet read her work in aristocratic drawing rooms on both sides of the Atlantic. The London Chronicle went so far as to declare her "perhaps one of the greatest instances of pure, unassisted genius that the world ever produced."
Wheatley's...

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

"Various Poems," by Phillis Wheatley. Phillis Wheatley was second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman (1753-1784).

Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, A Native African and a Slave. Dedicated to the Friends of the Africans. By Phillis Wheatley; Margaretta Matilda Odell