Mary Prince

Mary Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda around 1788 and became the first Black woman to publish an account of her life in Britain. Sold away from her family at twelve, she worked in the salt ponds of the Turks Islands and in households in Bermuda and Antigua before her owners, the Wood family, brought her to London in 1828, where she left them and found shelter with the Anti-Slavery Society. In 1829 she became the first woman to present a petition to Parliament. Her History, dictated to Susanna Strickland and published in 1831, ran to three editions in a year and figured in two libel trials.