Details
WHEATLEY, PHILLIS. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London: Printed for A. Bell...1773. 12mo, contemporary sheep, rebacked, fore-corners recapped or worn, edges scuffed; morocco slipcase. FIRST EDITION of the first book by the first black American poet (preceded by broadsides by her and by Jupiter Hammon), engraved frontispiece portrait of the author. Sabin 103136; Negro History 194; Wegelin 432; Brawley 31.
"The author (1753-84) was kidnapped on the coast of Africa when a child of eight, and brought in a slave ship to Boston. There she was bought by John Wheatley, a Tailor, who trained her as a servant and eventually freed her. She mastered the English language in sixteen months, was writing English verse at the age of thirteen, published an elegy on the death of Whitefield in 1770, and became a literary sensation both in Boston and London"--John S. Van E. Kohn, Seven Gables Bookshop, First Books by American Authors, 1965, item 297.
Provenance: Early signature of Amelia Page on front free endpaper.
"The author (1753-84) was kidnapped on the coast of Africa when a child of eight, and brought in a slave ship to Boston. There she was bought by John Wheatley, a Tailor, who trained her as a servant and eventually freed her. She mastered the English language in sixteen months, was writing English verse at the age of thirteen, published an elegy on the death of Whitefield in 1770, and became a literary sensation both in Boston and London"--John S. Van E. Kohn, Seven Gables Bookshop, First Books by American Authors, 1965, item 297.
Provenance: Early signature of Amelia Page on front free endpaper.