Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley - photo 1
Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley - photo 2

Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley

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$ 3 024
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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ID 967615
Lot 4 | Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley
Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley

printed in the Massachusetts Centinel, 8 December 1783

WHEATLEY PETERS, Phillis (c.1753-1784) – [Death notice for Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley], printed in The Massachusetts Centinel, Vol II, No. 23, 8 December 1784.



Phillis Wheatley Peters's earliest death notice in the Massachusetts Centinel—her only funerary monument. Phillis remained in the Wheatley household after gaining her freedom, and upon the death of John Wheatley in 1778 married an educated free Black man named John Peters. Despite a promising start, with Peters taking over management of the very estate where he had once been enslaved and Phillis preparing a second book of poems, a series of lawsuits bankrupted the young family and saw Phillis's husband imprisoned for debt. Forced to sell her books and her work table, Phillis was unable to find an American publisher for her poetry and she went to work as a maid to support herself. None of her children survived, and she died at the age of 31. She was buried without a headstone, with only a scattering of newspaper notices to mark her death. This one, which is the earliest recorded by Robinson, reads: "Last Lord's Day died Phillis Peters, formerly Phillis Wheatley, known to the literary world by her celebrated miscellaneous poems." No copies of any of her death notices are recorded at auction by RBH. Robinson 1784.7. See Cornelia Dayton, "Lost Years Recovered: John Peters and Phillis Wheatley Peters in Middleton" in New England Quarterly, Vol. 94, No. 3 (September 2021) for more on her married life and final years.



Bifolium, 262 x 410mm (trimmed at top edge not affecting notice, chipped at gutter likely from being bound with other issues of The Massachusetts Centinel); in a modern half morocco box.

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