SOURCE: "Anglo-American Racism and Phillis Wheatley's 'Sable Veil,' 'Length'ned Chain,' and 'Knitted Heart'," in Women in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, University Press of Virginia, 1989, pp. 338-445

In the following excerpt, Grimsted claims that Wheatley's poetry, rather than avoiding the controversial issues of slavery and independence, obliquely displays a critical sensitivity and attention to racial and political injustice.

…While Wheatley's race assured continuing attention to her work, it perhaps has also circumvented the interpretive rigor with which it has been treated.¹³ The appreciative critics from the beginning have judged its quality reasonably well, if not very deeply. The London Magazine, reviewing her poems on publication, said they showed "no astonishing powers of genius," but revealed talent remarkably "vigorous and lively." Lydia Maria Child's evaluation of them in the 1830s was similar, and Delano Goddard called the best...