The History of Mary Prince

A West Indian Slave

Mary Prince 1831

This life story recounts an enslaved woman's experiences in Bermuda, the Caribbean, and England. Her account describes the painful work of collecting salt in the Turks Islands.

91 pages 1h 45m reading time

The first published account of the life of a Black woman enslaved in the British Empire.
Argues that enslaved people were not content with their lot, answering the slaveholders' claim that slavery in the Caribbean was gentle and kind.
Shows, through her own voice, how slavery tore apart families and how enslaved women suffered beatings and sexual abuse from their owners.
Its two editions in its first year helped stir British public feeling against slavery in the years just before Parliament ended it across most of the empire in 1833.
It is now one of the founding texts of Black British and Caribbean writing.

Her owner went to court

Her former owner sued the book's editor for libel, and Mary Prince herself gave evidence at the trial.
Spoken, not written

Prince told her story aloud in London to Susanna Strickland, a young English writer who wrote it down.
Edited by an activist

Thomas Pringle, an anti-slavery campaigner she worked for, edited the text and added notes and supporting letters.
Found again much later

After long neglect, a new edition in 1987 brought her story back to a wide modern readership.