At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions.
The first published African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley (1753-84) was born in West Africa, captured, and sold as a slave to the Wheatley family of Boston. Educated alongside her master's children, Wheatley achieved international renown with her initial poems but slipped into obscurity shortly afterward and died in poverty.
