The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave,

Mary Prince was the first black woman to escape from slavery in the British colonies and to publish a record of her life in bondage. Born into servitude, at the tender age of twelve she witnessed the ruin of her family, with her mother and each of her siblings sold off to separate owners, after which she herself was passed from master to master, all of whom subjected her to sexual or physical abuse. In this vivid and graphic account she describes the hideous working conditions of those enslaved, and the barbaric, arbitrary punishments meted out for minor or imagined misdemeanours, many of which led to the death of those oppressed. In her middle years Mary was taken to England, where (all slaves being automatically freed on touching English soil) she fled her former owner and took refuge with Thomas Pringle - a staunch abolitionist - who aided the editing of these her memoirs, first published to wide acclaim in 1831. Included in this fully annotated edition are five illustrations and one map, Thomas Pringle's report on the life and character of Mary Prince, and a short account of the trials of Asa-Asa, a young man who was captured during inter-tribal warfare and held as a slave in Africa for six months, before being sold into the Atlantic Slave Trade.