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 intelligible.