As a young African-American girl writing in the 19th century, Plato has been described as an heir to Phillis Wheatley, who wrote her first published poem at the age of 13 in 1766.
Most of what is known about her comes from the introduction of her book, written by Reverend James W. C. Pennington, pastor of the Colored Congregational Church of Hartford and the first black man to attend classes at Yale University.
In her book's introduction, Pennington wrote of Plato: "My authoress is a colored lady, a member of my church, of pleasing piety and modest worth.
[6] Some critics from later generations found Plato's essays and poetry to be overly moralizing as well as routine and lacking in originality.
Many of them also derided her for not mentioning the issue of slavery in America, as did some of her near contemporaries including Frances Harper and Charlotte Forten Grimke.
[9] In 1988, Oxford University Press released The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers with Professor Henry Louis Gates as the general editor of the series.
Plato uses the eulogies of four Black girls, Louisa Sebury, Julia Ann Pell, Eliza Loomis Sherman, and Elizabeth Low, who most likely died of consumption, to present a template on how to live a "legible" righteous life.