Born in West Africa, Wheatley was seized in 1761 and brought to the colonies when she was seven years old. Too young for the grueling labor of the West Indies or the southern colonies, where slave traders stopped first after the Atlantic crossing, she was brought to Boston. Phillis was purchased by John Wheatley, a well-known tailor, and his wife Susanna, who were looking for a domestic servant. Unlike the vast majority of Africans held in bondage in the colonies, Phillis was taught to read and write by the Wheatley family. While continuing in her domestic duties, she studied geography, history, astronomy, and Alexander Pope and John Milton as well as Virgil, Homer, Ovid, and other Greek and Latin classics. In 1767, at the age of thirteen, Phillis published her first poem in the Newport Mercury, "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin." She achieved national and international attention when...