The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself

Abstract

In early 1831, a particular conjunction of people and events encouraged and enabled Thomas Pringle, the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society in Britain, to publish on his own undertaking The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, generally remembered today as the only slave narrative of a West Indian woman. Within months, three editions of the narrative had been published; plans for a fourth edition were dropped after Mary Prince’s owner in Antigua John Wood instigated libel action against Pringle over his handling of Wood’s response to Anti-Slavery Society interventions to secure Prince’s freedom in Antigua as well as Britain. Prince’s owners John and Margaret Wood, who lived in Antigua and had acquired Prince in c. 1817, had brought her to England in June 1828. She left their temporary home in London in 1828 in the midst of disputes over her alleged poor conduct and insubordination. By the terms of Lord Stowell’s 1827 decision in the test case of Grace Jones, Prince’s status as a slave was temporarily suspended during her continued residence in England. Knowing that “[t]o be free is very sweet” (H, 31), she chose to stay in England rather than return to slavery in Antigua (where her husband Daniel James lived). Since 1829 she had worked as a servant in the home of Thomas and Margaret Pringle. “The idea of writing Mary Prince’s history,” Pringle states in his Preface, “was first suggested by herself” (H, 3).