Wheatley Had To Prove In Court That Her Poems Were Written By Her

It was hard for many colonists to accept that an African slave was producing “great” poetry. In 1772, something seemingly absurd happened, and Wheatley had to prove to the court the authorship of her poetry in court. John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and Andrew Oliver, his vice governor, were among the Boston elite who examined her. After careful consideration and evaluation, they came to the conclusion that she had actually written the poems that had been claimed to her, and she signed an attestation that was included in the preface of her collection of poems.

The poems she wrote have different themes like Religious and Moral, which was published in London in 1773. Publishers in Boston had turned it down, but powerful people in London were very interested in her work.