Her de facto owner, Susanna Wheatley
(wife of a wealthy tailor), and her teenage daughters took the unusual and even illegal step of giving their slave an education. Phillis could read the Bible in English...
Travel
Phillis Wheatley
PW
left London again for Boston, probably earlier than intended, because of what proved to be the last illness of her mistress, Susanna Wheatley
.
Wheatley, Phillis, and Henry Louis, Jr Gates. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Editor Shields, John C., Oxford University Press, 1988.
338-9
Violence
Phillis Wheatley
She was soon afterwards sold as property, for a trifle,
qtd. in
Wheatley, Phillis, and Henry Louis, Jr Gates. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Editor Shields, John C., Oxford University Press, 1988.
337
to the husband of Susanna Wheatley
.
Wealth and Poverty
Phillis Wheatley
They piled up debts, for which John Peters was jailed. It seems that economic survival became hard for PW
from about the time of Susanna Wheatley
's death.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Wheatley, Phillis, and Henry Louis, Jr Gates. The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. Editor Shields, John C., Oxford University Press, 1988.