The Writings of Phillis Wheatley ed. by Vincent Carretta

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Writings of Phillis Wheatley ed. by Vincent Carretta April Langley (bio) The Writings of Phillis Wheatley vincent carretta, ed. Oxford University Press, 2019 226 pp. From start to finish, Vincent Carretta's The Writings of Phillis Wheatley (Writings) is the book I wished had been available when I taught my first course of early American literature more than twenty years ago. It is one that will quickly become a standard for instruction at all levels, [End Page 635] from K–12 teachers to undergraduate- and graduate-level professors to postgraduate instructors in early Anglo-, Euro-, and African American literature and history courses. For those instructors most familiar with Carretta's 2001 Penguin Classics version, you will recognize some subtle but important differences: timeline, extended introduction, and prefatory details that bring the most current historical context to her published and variant poetry and her life, freedom, marriage, and death. Of course, of critical significance is Wheatley's 1776 letter to Obour Tanner, discovered in 2005. Far from being a reprint, the 2019 Writings provides the fullest recovery of the early Black revolutionary poet and her works published, to date. Carretta brings the best of all archival and secondary resources available to this text. To begin with, the timeline contextualizes Wheatley for students to gain a better understanding of her works and her position within the political milieux of eighteenth-century Boston as it provides dates for such watershed events in colonial American history as the Seven Years' War, the Stamp Act (passage and repeal), the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Mansfield ruling, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, the timeline also locates Wheatley geographically in such a way that instructors and students can consider the cultural and national contexts within which her publications and responses, especially variants, can be analyzed. Importantly, seemingly small details such as John Wheatley's death and the disposition of his estate, having left "PW nothing in his will" (xvii), and Wheatley's marriage, death, and that of her husband John Peters provide a handy reference point that permits quick reviews of dates, names, and publication sources of relevance to the poet's life and works. Writings also provides in one accessible text a correction of previous errors in the Wheatley bio-bibliography, as well as a rich selection of verified sources of Wheatley scholarship from which instructors and students alike can peer into the crevices of the extra textual and companion works as they glean from the insights provided by the diverse scholarly works listed in "Further Reading" section (including but not limited to an excellent supplemental work, Carretta's own Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage [U of Georgia P, 2011]). Indeed, the scholarship identified is as varied as Wheatley's own muses, and instructors will appreciate the foundational works therein as ones that will put students on a secure footing in their study of Wheatley as well as engage them in a deeper learning [End Page 636] experience of the poet's varied use of genres and writing style (e.g., elegiac, neoclassical, biblical paraphrase, occasional, and epistle) to address diverse contemporary and historical issues (personal, political, and religious)—underscoring the truly inclusive nature of Wheatley's Poems and Various Subjects, Religious and Moral—for a twenty-first-century student of American literature. The introduction engages students and enables rich class discussions about prevailing questions in early American literary history with regard to the enslaved African poet's agency and her "network of associations … in London … North American and Britain" (xx) and details the "terms" under which Wheatley "compelled" her manumission (xx), her "business acumen," and "anti-slavery stance" (xxi). Importantly, Writings allows a study of this author that is not so overly laden with references that it obscures the literary works. At the same time, prefatory details about "manuscript versions" and revisions invite consideration of the poet's "developing skill" (xxiii) and her "proto-national" strain. Additionally, insights regarding audience and reception of her published works in publication and prepublication records are invaluable to the novice and expert alike. Such features also offer concise historical, political, religious, and personal contexts...