SCHOLARLY BOOKS ON PWP AND HER ERA
Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley Peters: Biography of a Genius in Bondage
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This updated biography of PWP “recovers her life and times and reclarims the recognition and status she deserves as a heroic literary and political figure in an age of heroes.” Incorporating “significant discoveries that Vincent Carretta and others have made since the books’s initial [2011] publication,” this 2023 expanded account offers a full scholarly accounting of Wheatley Peters’s life in the context of her times. To learn more, visit this page at the University of Georgia Press.
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Tara Bynum, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America
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In one chapter of her recent study of Black reading and writing as “an act of resistance” that “brought pleasure” as well, author Tara Bynum examines how “The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend.” Learn more about the book and author here.
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David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence
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As noted by the book’s publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives.”Historian David Waldstreicher explores PWP’s wide-ranging experiences, including being “Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide.” For more of the publisher’s account, go here.
For an appreciative review in the New York Times that also provides accessible commentary on Wheatley Peters’s life, visit here. |
ACADEMIC ESSAYS ON PWP AND HER ERA
In this section, we provide information on academic journal articles and book chapters related to Phillis Wheatley Peters. Consistent with our focus on the anniversary year for this project, we spotlight texts published in 2023. However, we begin our list with information about a special issue of Early American Literature tied to the anniversary year, although the collection of pieces itself appeared in 2022.
We invite scholars with related publications from 2023, or in the pipeline to appear shortly thereafter, to submit their works’ citations and an abstract, or, if possible, a link to the essay itself (if permission from its publisher has been secured).
We invite scholars with related publications from 2023, or in the pipeline to appear shortly thereafter, to submit their works’ citations and an abstract, or, if possible, a link to the essay itself (if permission from its publisher has been secured).
Special Issuse of Early American Literature
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“Dear Sister: Phillis Wheatley’s Futures” is a special issue of the journal Early American Literature. It features full-form essays and shorter archival essays, a pedagogical forum, and poems by undergraduate students that emphasize new scholarly directions in Wheatley studies. There is a particular emphasis on the ‘future’ of Wheatley studies. Where do we go from here? The special issue appeared at the end of 2022 in anticipation of the 250th anniversary in 2023 of Poems on Various Subjects.
Here, in a PDF file, we provide citations and abstracts of the full-length essays in the special issue and citations from the “Inventions” section. Thank you to the journal and the editors of the special issue for making this material available. We appreciate the opportunity to share resources from this important project with our website users. PDF file of Contents list, citations, and abstracts 
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