Wheatley, Phillis

Poems on Comic, Serious, and Moral Subjects.  The Second Edition, Corrected.  London: printed for J. French, (1787)



8vo (7  1/8  x 4  1/8  in.; 181 x 115 mm).  Engraved portrait frontispiece, advertisement leaf dated 1 January 1787; frontispiece closely trimmed at outer margin, small hole in title affecting one letter in imprint, occasional browing and spotting.  Contemporary speckled calf; spine renewed, worn and rubbed at extremities.

Charles Cornwallis, first Marquess Cornwallis (armorial bookplate as Earl Cornwallis [his title from 1762 to 1792])

Brawley 31; Sabin 103136; Wegelin 432

General Cornwallis's copy of the first volume of poetry written by a black American.  Second edition.

Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753–1784), who came to Boston from Senegal in 1761, was a slave serving in the household of John Wheatley.  She was tutored by Mrs. Wheatley and her daughter and was greatly influenced by the Latin classics and Pope.  She began to write occasional verse and became "a kind of poet-laureate in the domestic circles of Boston" (Brawley).  On a trip to England in 1773 she was taken up by the circle of the Countess of Huntingdon and arrangements were made for publication of Poems, which was to be the only collection of her verse to appear in her lifetime.