History of Mary Prince

The first narrative by an enslaved woman ever published in Britain, Mary Prince's memoir detonated across English society in 1831. Born into slavery in Bermuda, Prince spent her childhood and young adulthood enduring brutal beatings, backbreaking labor, and sexual abuse on various plantations. After gaining her freedom through a legal battle in England, she became the first Black woman to publish an account of her life in bondage, and her words set off a scandal that reached Parliament.Prince's account doesn't flinch from detailing the physical violence, the tearing apart of families, and the particular horrors faced by enslaved women. Her voice is urgent, specific, and indignant. The book caused immediate controversy: the West Indies planters who owned her former masters sued her publisher for libel, making this one of the earliest and most dramatic test cases for free speech about slavery in Britain. More than a historical document, it is a human being insisting on her own humanity in a world determined to deny it.