Introduction to The Poems of Phillis Wheatley hen the first edition of this book was published in 1966, it appropriately spoke of the need to make readily available once more Phillis Wheatley’s poems, which had become difficult to obtain despite various printings of them over the decades. Since 1966 her poems have become much more widely available through that edition and also through the work of a respectable body of scholars and critics over only a little more than two decades since that first edition was prepared. Various factors have contributed to increased interest in Phillis Wheatley and her poetry during that time, including the country’s bicentennial (focusing on the period when she flourished) and a general heightening of awareness of past and continuing contributions by blacks to American culture as a whole. Another of the catalysts and aids in this interest (as had been intended) was the first edition of this book, making most of her work readily available once more and in context in a scholarly edition. Now, thanks mostly to a handful of persistent scholars whose contributions are obvious in the pages of this new edition, we know of more poems, more variants of poems, and more letters by her, and we know a good bit more about her life and its contexts. Also, much more aesthetic, cultural, and intentional critical attention has been paid to her writings.