The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave

Opening of the book

THE
HISTORY OF MARY PRINCE,
A WEST INDIAN SLAVE.
RELATED BY HERSELF.
WITH A SUPPLEMENT BY THE EDITOR.
To which is added,
THE NARRATIVE OF ASA-ASA,
A CAPTURED AFRICAN.
"By our sufferings, since ye
brought us
To the man-degrading mart,—
All sustain'd by patience,
taught us
Only by a broken heart,—
Deem our nation brutes no
longer,
Till some reason ye shall
find
Worthier of regard, and
stronger

Than the colour of our kind."
Cowper.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY F. WESTLEY AND A. H. DAVIS,
Stationers' Hall Court;
And by WAUGH & INNES, EDINBURGH.
1831.
PREFACE.
The idea of writing Mary Prince's history was first
suggested by herself. She wished it to be done, she said,
that good people in England might hear from a slave what a
slave had felt and suffered; and a letter of her late
master's, which will be found in the Supplement, induced
me to accede to her wish without farther delay. The more
immediate object of the publication will afterwards
appear.
The narrative was taken down from Mary's own lips by a
lady who happened to be at the time residing in my family
as a visitor. It was written out fully, with all the
narrator's repetitions and prolixities, and afterwards
pruned into its present shape; retaining, as far as was
practicable,
Mary's
exact
expressions
and
peculiar
phraseology. No fact of importance has been omitted, and
not a single circumstance or sentiment has been added. It
is essentially her own, without any material alteration
farther than was requisite to exclude redundancies and
gross grammatical errors, so as to render it clearly

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