Mary Prince

The History of Mary Prince

Mary Prince was a British abolitionist and autobiographer, born in Bermuda, to an enslaved family of African descent. While she was later living in London, England, she wrote The History of Mary Prince (1831), which was the first account of the life of a black woman to be published in the United Kingdom. Belonging to the genre of slave narratives, this first-hand description of the brutalities of enslavement, released at a time when slavery was still legal in Bermuda and British Caribbean colonies, had a galvanising effect on the anti-slavery movement. It went through three printings in the first year. Prince had her account transcribed while living and working in England at the home of Thomas Pringle, a founder of the Anti-Slavery Society. She had gone to London with her master and his family in 1828 from Antigua.