Mary Prince (1) (1788–1833)

Born a slave in the Bermuda, separated from her family after having been sold, Mary Prince tells here her story.

A maid slaving for cruel masters, her life is poignant. Sad and revolting it shows, above all, with a great sensibility, the whole brutality and hypocrisy of what was slavery as an institution. Her respite, in fact, will come only when her 'owners' will travel to London, taking her with them and where she will courageously decide to leave them. Legally free on English soil but show more unable to return to Bermuda without falling back into servitude again, alone and destitute, she will go and seek help towards her Church and the Anti-Slavery Society. An abolitionist will shelter her in his home. A friend of his will put down on paper her biography as she told her.

Here is a crucial account. First published in 1831, it is the first female first-hand account of slavery. It will also be a success in serving the abolitionist campaign, its violence having caused two trials for libel, which, both, contributed to add to the outrage then felt by its primary audience. Her voice truly had the strength to shake injustice! Less than a decade later, in fact, in 1838, slaves were emancipated in British colonies... Mary Prince's life story, then, was a nail in the coffin before the coffin was even fully closed. show less

Read for a graduate seminar on Human Rights - while this account of slavery is harrowing, I think it falls short in being mediated through the words of a white woman and presented as a means of propaganda for the mostly-white Anti Slavery Society. Thus what I want more of is Mary Prince's own voice and story and less of the white publisher's call to action- no matter how righteous the cause.

Frederick Douglass's account is searing. The plantation owners create a system of unremitting torture and terror. Slaves are whipped for no reason, forced to work every moment of the day, and are always hungry for lack of food. Douglass rebels, and, impossibly, survives.

One of those books that is what it says on the box. Hard to tell how much edited, though the editor claims as little as possible. Either way, Mary Prince tells her life vividly and economically; though she barely lingers over any one of the torments laid upon her and her fellow slaves, the reader gains a clear picture of each and of the whole they make up. The backmatter gives the political context of British tolerance of overseas slavery at the time, and of the very piecemeal approach to show more remedying it. show less