The Cambridge Companion to Mary Prince

An authoritative guide to Prince's gendered account of slavery, showing the diversity of disciplinary encounters that her narrative invites.

Nicole N. Aljoe (Edited by)

9781009259453, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 May 2025

241 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.507 kg

The History of Mary Prince was the first account of the life of a Black woman to be published in the United Kingdom. Part of the avalanche of print culture that accompanied the transatlantic abolitionist movement, it has in recent years become an increasingly central text within pedagogy and research on Black history and literature, thanks to its vivid testimonies of Prince's thoughts and feelings about her gendered experience of Caribbean slavery. Embracing and celebrating a growing international scholarly and general interest in African diasporic voices, texts, histories, and literary traditions, this Companion weds contributions from Romanticists, Caribbeanists, and Americanists to showcase the diversity of disciplinary encounters that Prince's narrative invites, as well as its rich and troubled contexts. The first published collection on a single slave narrative or author, the volume is not only an authoritative, highly focused resource for students but also a model for future research.

List of Contributors
Chronology
Introduction: Mary Prince and the slave narrative Nicole N. Aljoe
1. The History of Mary Prince and the web of Black Atlantic print culture Kerry Sinanan
2. The ornamental, the polemical, and the testimonial: Pringle, Strickland, and anti-slavery print culture Juliet Shields
3. Notions of voice in The History of Mary Prince Dyanne K. Martin
4. Mary Prince and Black Britain Olivia Robotham Carpenter
5. Reading the spiritual worlds of Mary Prince Sue Thomas
6. The trials of Mary Prince David Lambert
7. Mary Prince: an economic life beyond slavery Gelien Matthews
8. Sex, kinship, and other freedom practices: reading gender and sexuality in The History of Mary Prince Anna Feuerstein
9. Disability, mobility, and agency in Mary Prince's History Andrea Stone
10. Mary Prince in Bermuda and the Caribbean Shelby Johnson
11. Mary Prince's environmental history Elizabeth Polcha
12. The history of Mary Prince and digital humanities Sarah Connell
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]