(1753?–84), U.S. poet. Born in about 1753, probably in Senegal, Phillis Wheatley was brought to America as a slave and raised by her Boston owners, the Wheatleys, who taught her English, ancient Greek, and Latin. She wrote her first poems at the age of 13 and later traveled to London, where her first book, ‘Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral', was published in 1773. She was freed after the deaths of the Wheatleys. She married John Peters, a free man, in 1778.