Prince soon realised that although she was free by law in London, if she managed to return to her beloved husband in Antigua she would be enslaved again. It is widely accepted that The History of Mary Prince was heavily edited to suit the abolitionist cause – a campaign was still being waged in an attempt to outlaw slavery throughout the British Colonies. “This highly scripted account was the first time that enslaved women were at the forefront of the anti-slavery campaign and when The History of Mary Prince was published, British slaveholders and their defenders vehemently attacked her character and attempted to discredit her.” Readers did not meet a helpless female victim, they met a woman who protested mistreatment, disobeyed orders, defended herself and ultimately emancipated herself. Professor Sensbach said: “Mary Prince brought a distinctly female voice to the abolition debate at a time when women’s voices were completely obscured. Although Prince could read it is not clear whether she could write. He examines the role of spirituality in the life of Prince, who was born a slave in Bermuda and was sold from one brutal owner to another before arriving in London in 1828 where she was suddenly a free woman because The Act of Parliament to abolish the British slave trade had passed in 1807.Īfter months of working as a servant for John Wood, a sadistic white man from London who bought her in Antigua and brought her to England, Mary Prince ran away to a missionary group which directed her to the Anti-Slavery Society.Ībolitionists quickly spotted the public relations value of her story and the poet Susanna Strickland was used as a ghostwriter for The History of Mary Prince.

In a chapter dedicated to Prince, Professor Jon Sensbach, a historian at the University of Florida, determines that at the heart of The History of Mary Prince is a passion story rooted in sacrifice and redemption.

The history of mary prince