Who Was the First African American Author of a Published Book of Poetry: The Full Story

Phillis Wheatley was the first African American author of a published book of poetry. Her collection, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was printed in London in September 1773, when she was about 20 years old and still enslaved in Boston. The book carried a signed attestation from 18 Boston officials confirming that a young African woman had written the poems. No earlier book of poetry by an African American author is known to survive or to be documented.

How a 1773 Book Cleared Its Own Credibility Hurdle

The central mechanism here is not just authorship. It is verification. In 1772, Wheatley could not publish in Boston because the publishers doubted a enslaved teenager had written the poems. The attestation solved that problem by converting a claim into a witnessed fact. The document was signed by Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver, and 16 other men of standing. The wording certified that the poems were "written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa."

That sentence is a key to the whole episode. The book's authority rested on white male endorsement, not on the poet's own word. Wheatley had to prove authorship in a way no white writer of the era did. The London publisher Archibald Bell then handled the printing, and the book appeared with a frontispiece portrait, a subscription list, and the attestation. Roughly 300 subscribers backed the volume.

The physical book also did intellectual work. Its existence proved that an African could master English meter, classical allusion, and Christian devotional form. Wheatley wrote in heroic couplets and drew on Alexander Pope and John Milton. The poems were not naive folk verse. They were formal, learned, and public. That form mattered because it forced readers to confront a contradiction: the same society that defended slavery was reading proof of African intellectual capacity. The attestation created the legal and social license for publication. The poems themselves created the argument.

The Numbers That Anchor the Claim

Three figures define the case. First, 1773: the publication year, confirmed by the title page. Second, about 20: Wheatley's approximate age at publication, based on her arrival in Boston around age 7 or 8 in 1761 and her birth in West Africa around 1753. Third, 18: the number of Boston signatories on the attestation.

The book's reach was modest by modern standards but real. The first edition ran to about 120 pages and appeared in London, with a Boston reprint following in 1774. A second London edition came in 1775. Wheatley was manumitted in 1773, around the time the book appeared, though the exact timing relative to publication is debated. She died in 1784 at about 31.

The timing of the claim matters. Wheatley's book predates the next known African American poetry book, Jupiter Hammon's An Evening Thought, which was published as a broadside in 1760, and this is where careful readers should pause. Hammon's work is a single poem printed as a broadside, not a book of poetry. Wheatley's is the first published book of poetry. The distinction between broadside and book is real, and it is the reason her claim is worded as a book. That is the professional caveat: the answer depends on how you define book.

The Precedents and Edge Cases Around the Claim

The boundary cases are where thin explainers go wrong. Jupiter Hammon, enslaved on Long Island, published An Evening Thought in 1760. It was a broadside, a single sheet, not a bound collection. Some sources call it the first published poem by an African American, which is accurate for a poem. It is not the first book of poetry.

The comparison table below sorts the early candidates by format, year, and status relative to the claim.

A second edge case: Wheatley's 1773 book was published in London, not America. That is a common objection. The claim is about the author's identity, not the printing location. Wheatley was African American, and the book was published during her lifetime while she lived in Boston. The London imprint reflects the racial gatekeeping of Boston publishers, not a change in authorship. A third edge case concerns the word published. Some poems appeared in newspapers before 1773. A book is a different unit. The claim stands on the book, not on the earliest printed line.

Misconceptions and Red Flags

The most common error is confusing the first published poem with the first published book. Hammon's 1760 broadside is the former, Wheatley's 1773 volume the latter. Both claims can be true at once, and the difference is format.

Another misconception treats the attestation as a mark of honor. It was a burden. Wheatley had to produce witnesses to her own authorship because her word alone was not accepted. That is a professional caveat worth keeping: the document is evidence of the era's racism as much as of Wheatley's achievement.

Red flag: claims that Wheatley was the first African American to publish anything. Prose and broadsides came earlier. Red flag: claims that Hammon's 1760 poem was a book. It was a single sheet. Red flag: claims that the London printing weakens the "American" part. The author's identity is the claim. Red flag: presenting Wheatley's age as exactly known. It is estimated from her arrival and birth records. Red flag: calling the attestation a formality. It was a condition of publication.

A subtler misconception is that Wheatley's book was an immediate bestseller. It sold through subscribers and reprints, but it was not a mass-market success. The point was symbolic and intellectual, not commercial.

Practical Steps for Verifying the Claim

If you are checking this for a paper, a classroom, or a report, a few concrete thresholds settle most disputes. First, define the unit. A book means a bound collection with multiple poems, not a broadside or a newspaper printing. Second, check the title page date. Wheatley's reads 1773. Third, check the attestation's signatories. Eighteen names appear, including Hutchinson and Oliver. Fourth, check the author's status. Wheatley was enslaved in Boston at the time of writing and was manumitted around publication.

For a quick verification, consult the title page and the attestation, both reproduced in modern scholarly editions of Wheatley's work. Compare the format of Hammon's 1760 broadside against Wheatley's bound volume. If a source calls Hammon's poem a book, treat it as loose usage. If a source calls Wheatley the first African American poet, clarify whether it means first book or first published poem. Reconciliation is simple: Hammon first in print, Wheatley first in book form. State both when the distinction matters.

What the Timeline Shows

The time course from arrival to publication explains why the claim is remarkable. Wheatley arrived in Boston around 1761, learned English, and was reading Latin and classical literature within a few years. Her first published poem appeared in a Newport newspaper in 1767. The book followed six years later.

The timeline also exposes a counterintuitive detail. Wheatley's book was published in London because Boston would not print it. British publishers and subscribers made the book possible. The first African American book of poetry thus entered the world through transatlantic networks, not local ones. That fact does not diminish the claim. It deepens it.

The Limits of the Claim

The claim is secure but bounded. It rests on surviving evidence and a definition of book as a bound collection. No known earlier African American book of poetry exists. The word first always carries the risk of an undiscovered document. Historians phrase such claims cautiously for that reason. What can be said firmly is that no earlier book is documented, and that Wheatley's is the earliest known.

Her later life also limits the story. She married John Peters, struggled financially, and died young. Much of her second manuscript was lost. The book remains the central artifact of her legacy. The attestation and the poems together form the evidence base. One certifies authorship. The other demonstrates it. Understanding both is what separates a real answer from a thin one.