ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the production and reception of the abolitionist pamphlet, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave. It begins by introducing the twentieth-century recovery of The History, and examines debates over issues of authorship, authenticity, and the genre of the slave narrative following the recovery of this narrative. The chapter discusses women’s activity in British abolitionist movements. It shows that longer history of these interactions can help to better understand the legacies which have inherited today. The chapter argues that its moments of authorial erasure fit into a wider archive of writing about women’s enslavement. The History is a first person narrative of a self-emancipated colonial woman whose narrative was recorded and circulated within British abolitionist groups during the final push for colonial emancipation. Born into slavery in Bermuda, Prince becomes conscious of her enslaved status when the father of her young owner, Miss Betsey Williams, sells her in order to finance his second marriage.
