Phillis Wheatley

Available for over a year

Seized from Senegal/Gambia aged seven, Phillis Wheatley, as she was named by the American family who raised her, went on to become one of the best-known poets in 19th-century America. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) displayed her facility writing couplets and elegies and the knowledge of Greek and Latin classics she developed after being given by John Wheatley as a gift to his wife and then taught to read and write. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar hosts a conversation with the playwright Adeola Solanke, American academics Montaz Marché and Brigitte Fielder and New Generation Thinker Xine Yao about the impact of Wheatley’s trip to London in 1773 and the people she met both on that trip and back in the city of Boston. Dr Xine Yao is a Lecturer in American Literature to 1900 at UCL and a BBC Radio 3 / AHRC New Generation Thinker. Montaz Marché is a historian and PhD student at the University of Birmingham, researching the lives of black women in 18th century London. Brigitte Fielder is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is co-editor of a recent special edition of the Early American Literature journal dedicated to Phillis Wheatley. Adeola Solanke is a British-Nigerian London based playwright who is currently a Fulbright scholar at Emerson College in Boston. She wrote a play, Phillis in London, depicting Wheatley’s time in London. Dr Christienna Fryar a historian of modern Britain, the British Empire, and the modern Caribbean at Goldsmiths and a BBC Radio 3 / AHRC New Generation Thinker Producer in Salford: Jonathan Hallewell On the Free Thinking programme website you can find a collection of discussions exploring Black History which include conversations about classical music, The Black Fantastic, Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance, Sugar, African Europeans, Black British History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp