Mary Prince

Mary Prince was born in Bermuda around 1788 and was sold multiple times during her life in enslavement in Bermuda, Turks Island, and Antigua. After traveling to England with the Wood family, she left their household and sought support from anti-slavery campaigners.

In 1831, her narrative, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, was published in London. It is widely recognized as the first published account of the life of a Black woman in slavery in Britain, and it became an important work in the movement against slavery.

Prince’s book combined the details of her own life with a direct witness to the violence and instability of slavery. Although many parts of her later life remain uncertain, her testimony endures as a powerful personal record and a landmark in Black Atlantic and abolitionist literature.