Phillis Wheatley

The story of Phillis Wheatley is nothing short of remarkable. She wrote poetry that includes elegies, epithalamiums, and letters. Stepping into this book was a historical journey into the life of a famous poet who turned her limitations into opportunities. Once she began to write, she couldn't stop,......more

As a note to start - I read only the introductory material, concluding notes, and "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral", not the extant poems, variants of published poems, and letters. I'm still considering this done because I don't feel reading every variant of a poem is necessary (and w......more

This is a difficult book to rate because it’s more interesting as a historical document than as a book of poems. The poems themselves read like what they are: an extraordinarily talented young woman’s juvenilia. The subject matter is almost entirely religious and the poems are mostly written in hero......more

3.5 I want to revisit this when i’m not in the middle of uni essays because i loved the writing and the poems were great but i had to speed read and so all the poems kind of melted into one thing......more

it's been a long time since I read a book of poetry cover to cover. I had read some of Wheatley's poetry but this volume includes a great introduction by the one and only Vincent Carretta, and contains a lot of her letters too. It is interesting to see how Wheatley is immersed in Christianity to the......more