The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave

(London: Penguin Books, 2000). Edited by Sara Salih. 196 x 127 mm; laminated pictorial wrappers; pp. xli + (i) + 115; facsimile title page from the third edition of 1831. Previous owner's discreet book label on first page. Fine condition. The life story of Mary Prince, employed as a domestic servant by Thomas Pringle, secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. "Mary Prince recalls that in the slave market in Bermuda, where she was put up for sale, the buyers' talk 'fell like cayenne on the fresh wounds of our hearts'. During her life as a slave she was taken from Bermuda to Turks Island and Antigua, eventually arriving in London where, in 1828, she reported the cruelty of her master and mistress to the Anti-Slavery Society. The History of Mary Prince (1831) was the first life of a black woman to be published in Britain. This extraordinary testament of ill-treatment and survival was a protest and a rallying-cry for emancipation that provoked two libel actions and ran into three editions in the year of its publication." .