In the autumn of 1773, a slender volume of poetry emerged from a London printing house that would forever alter the landscape of American literature. "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" bore the name of its author on the title page: Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston. This seemingly simple attribution concealed a profound paradox that would define both the poet's life and her…
“That it was not the small-pox that brought me to America, but I was brought from Africa to America.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
Anna Lætitia Barbauld, born Anna Aikin on 20 June 1743 and dead on 9 March 1825, was one of the most accomplished, influential, and later most unjustly neglected writers of the British Romantic era. Poet, essayist, editor, critic, educational reformer, author for children, and public intellectual, she wrote across forms that later literary history too often separated into “major” and “minor” kinds. In her own lifetim…
“The cultivation of the imagination is the great object of education.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
