Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral is the first published book by Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved African woman who became the first Black poet of note in the United States. Published in London in 1773, the collection features poems primarily on themes of morality, piety, and freedom. Wheatley was captured in West Africa and brought to Boston in 1761, where she received an education, an unusual circumstance for an enslaved person. Her work, often influenced by British Neoclassical poets, sometimes used the American struggle for independence as a metaphor for spiritual or racial freedom. Her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" directly addresses slavery within a Christian framework. Wheatley was freed shortly after her return from London in 1773.12