M. A. Richmond (Essay Date 1974)

SOURCE: Richmond, M. A. "The Critics." In Bid the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784) and George Moses Horton (ca. 1797-1883), pp. 53-66. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974.

In the following essay, Richmond surveys the critical response to Wheatley's work, including questions about her authenticity as a black author.

Most illustrious of Phillis Wheatley's contemporary critics was Thomas Jefferson, part revolutionary and part Virginia patrician, offering his judgment of the poet in his latter guise.

"Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [sic]; but it could not produce a poet," Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-82). "The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism." (Note the gratuitous skepticism even about the authenticity of her authorship in the phrase "published under her name.")

One...