Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was the first black American to publish a book and enjoyed international fame during her short life. Yet despite the considerable achievements of this young poet, her work has never received its critical due. This collection restores her to her proper place in America's literary heritage. Together with the editor's essay on 'Phillis Wheatley's Struggle for Freedom in Her Poetry and Prose', the collection reveals her to have been a writer who passionately sought freedom, both for herself and for her people, through her work, and who, in her contemplative elegies and use of the poetic imagination to escape an unsatisfactory world, anticipated the Romantic movement of the following century.