Phillis Wheatley Publishes Poems on Various Subjects

Phillis Wheatley, enslaved in Boston, published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in London — the first book by an African American and the third by an American woman. Wheatley had been examined by eighteen prominent Boston men, including John Hancock, to verify she wrote the poems herself. The book circulated in Britain and America and was invoked by abolitionists as proof of African intellectual capacity. Wheatley was manumitted shortly after publication.