Lot 1154 email save

Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley 1838

Sign In to see what this sold for

Title: Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and a Slave. Also, Poems by a Slave
Author: Wheatley, Phillis
Description: 155 pp. Frontispiece portrait, tissue guard. 6¼x3½, original ribbed cloth, printed paper spine label. housed in a custom oversize clamshell box. Stated Third Edition.Very rare copy of Phillis Wheatley's Poems. Wheatley was the first African-American to publish a book, and America's first black female poet. This edition includes the memoir by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a letter from George Washington to Wheatley expressing his admiration, an attestation by prominent citizens that the poems "really are" the work of Wheatley, preface by John Wheatley, plus poems by another slave, George Moses Horton. This edition is apparently the last time Wheatley's poems were published before the Civil War. Ownership signature of Ellen Hight dated 1840(?) on front free endpaper. See Sabin 103133.
Heading: Place Published: Boston
Publisher: Isaac Knapp
Date Published: 1838