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WALT NOTT (ESSAY DATE FALL 1993)

SOURCE: Nott, Walt. "From 'uncultivated Barbarian' to 'Poetical Genius': The Public Presence of Phillis Wheatley." MELUS 18, no. 3 (fall 1993): 21-32.

In the following essay, Nott surveys the public response to Wheatley's poetry.

The first edition of Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) included an attestation that the volume was the work of its purported author. "To the PUBLICK" was signed by Massachusetts's royal governor Thomas Hutchinson, lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver, and sixteen other Bay Colony notables, including John Hancock and John Wheatley, "her Master." The signatories assured the volume's readers that Poems on Various Subjects was indeed "written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is,...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Phillis Wheatley (Letter Date 1773)
   2. Phillis Wheatley (Letter Date 1774)
4. General Commentary
   1. M. A. Richmond (Essay Date 1974)
   2. Betsy Erkkila (Essay Date Fall 1987)
   3. Walt Nott (Essay Date Fall 1993)
5. Title Commentary
   1. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

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