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PHILLIS WHEATLEY'S FIRST APPEARANCE IN AN AMERICAN BOOK (LITERATURE AND POETRY.) WHEATLEY, PHILLIS. [CRAWFORD, CHARLES.] Observations Upon Negro Slavery [bound at the end of The Christian, A Poem in Four Books.] 12mo, 24; 111 pages;. 12mo, contemporary calf-backed paper-covered boards; spine chipped but binding firm; ownership signature "Micajah Speakman, His Book, 1784," and the early 19th century printed bookplate of his son Micajah Speakman Jr. on the front pastedown. Philadelphia: Cruikshank, 1784; 1783
first edition of "observations," and first american edition of "the christian", evans 18425 and 17893. Bound at the end this volume of poetry is a rare anti-slavery tract by the 18th century poet Charles Crawford, born in Antigua, the son of a planter (1751-1815). Crawford, unlike so many of his contemporaries, writing against the institution of slavery, based his tract on the intellectual capacity of the Negro rather than Biblical moralization. He devotes the first four pages of his tract to Phillis Wheatley, and quotes almost in its entirety her poem "To a Clergyman on the Death of His Lady." He also prints the "To The Public" notice that John Wheatley had published with Phillis Wheatley''s Poems on Various Subjects (London, 1773), showing the attestation of John Hancock and others at the examination of Phillis Wheatley conducted in Boston. This interrogation of Phillis Wheatley, written about in detail in Henry Louis Gates "The Trial of Phillis Wheatley" (2003) was held to determine that Phillis was indeed the author of her poems. The appearance here of Wheatley''s poem "To A Clergyman on the Death of His Lady," is the first book appearance of any poem by Phillis Wheatley in America. The first American edition of her "Poems on Various Subjects" was not printed until 1787 by Joseph Cruikshank of Philadelphia. The Speakman family, owners of this little volume, were Quakers from Chester, Pennsylvania. A very suiting provenance.
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