Cover not available
Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 314–329

Chapter 17
“From Mary’s own lips”

Orality, transcription, and editing in The History of Mary Prince

This chapter explores the complex layers of editing and mediation embedded in the abolitionist project of converting Prince’s storytelling into The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. I re-examine the tripartite editorial relationship between Pringle (editor), Moodie (transcriber), and Prince (narrator) as a salient example of nineteenth century editorial practice to expose the tensions between its antislavery aims and the purported accuracy of Prince’s “history.” Does Prince own her story? Is the text a work of collaboration, distortion, or appropriation? I interpret the editorial project and read closely scenes that demonstrate how Prince manages to break free from Pringle’s intensive editing and Moodie’s excision to reveal her distinctive voice that readers can, indeed, hear.
Keywords: Mary Prince, authorship, mediation, voice, nineteenth-century slave narratives
Article outline
  • Repetitions and prolixities
  • Textual alterations: Thomas Pringle and Mary Prince
  • Resemblance: This is not Mary Prince
  • Digital afterlives of Mary Prince
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (45)
References
Aljoe, Nicole N. 2011. “‘Going to Law’: Legal Discourse and Testimony in Early West Indian Slave Narratives.” Early American Literature 46 (2): 351–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allen, Jessica L. 2012. “Pringle’s Pruning of Prince: The History of Mary Prince and the Question of Repetition.” Callaloo 35 (2, Spring): 509–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andrews, William L. 1988. Six Women’s Slave Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Banner, Rachel. 2013. “Surface and Stasis: Re-reading Slave Narratives via The History of Mary Prince.” Callaloo 36 (2, Spring): 298–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumgartner, Barbara. 2001. “The Body as Evidence: Resistance, Collaboration, and Appropriation in ‘The History of Mary Prince.’” Callaloo 24, no. 1 (Winter): 253–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berrian, Brenda F. 1994. “Claiming an Identity: Caribbean Women Writers in English.” Journal of Black Studies 25 (2): 200–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blevins, Steven. 2016. Living Cargo: How Black Britain Performs Its Past. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bohls, Elizabeth A. 2014. “A Long Way from Home: Slavery, Travel, and Imperial Geography in The History of Mary Prince.” In Slavery and the Politics of Place: Representing the Colonial Caribbean, 1770–1833, 165–184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Moira, ed. 1997. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
, ed. 1997. Introduction. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
, ed. 2015. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670–1834. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gadpaille, Michelle. 2011. “Trans-Colonial Collaboration and Slave Narrative: Mary Prince Revisited.” ELOPE 8, no. 2: 63–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gates, Henry L., Jr., ed. 2012. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York, New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
, ed. 2012. Introduction. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York, New York: Penguin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. 2011. Slavery and the Culture of Taste. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Google Doodle. 2018. “Happy Birthday Mary Prince!” October 1, 2018. [URL]
Greenspan, Rachel E. 2019. “The First Google Doodle in 1998 Was a ‘Bit of a Joke.’ Here’s the Story Behind the Design That Started it All.” Time.com. 26 September 2019. [URL]
Hall, Catherine, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington, and Rachel Lang. 2014. Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hammonds, Evelynn. 1994. “Black (W)holes and The Geometry of Black Female Sexuality.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6 (2&3): 126–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya. 2019. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Hermansen, Paige M. 2015. “‘It Is Essentially Her Own”: Authenticating Discourse, Institutional Authority, and Narrative Agency in The History of Mary Prince.” In Representations of Internarrative Identity, edited by Lori Way, 68–89. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Innes, Catherine L. 2008. A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lucy Bird, Eleanor. 2019. “Susanna Moodie’s Last Letter About Mary Prince.” Notes and Queries 66 (2): 285–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Dyanne. 2017. “Island Squalls of Indignation: The Rhetoric of Freedom in The History of Mary Prince.” CEA Critic 79 (3): 309–315. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
“Mary Prince Named 2012 Bermuda National Hero.” 2012. Bernews.com. June 8, 2012. [URL]
Murphy, Laura T. 2019. The New Slave Narrative: The Battle Over Representations of Contemporary Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nwankwo, Ifeoma Kiddoe. 2014. “A Slave’s Cosmopolitanism: Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, and the Geography of Identity.” In Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Paquet, Sandra P. 1992. “The Heartbeat of a West Indian Slave: The History of Mary Prince.” African American Review 26 (1, Spring): 131–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, Mary. (1831) 2012. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Written by Herself. In The Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York, New York: Signet Classics.Google Scholar
. 2004. The History of Mary Prince, edited by Sara Salih. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pringle, Thomas. 1834. African Sketches. London: Edward Moxon.Google Scholar
. 1828. Ephemerides; or occasional poems. Written in Scotland and South Africa. London: Smith, Elder.Google Scholar
Rauwerda, A. M. 2001. “Naming, Agency, and ‘A Tissue of Falsehoods’ in The History of Mary Prince.” Victorian Literature and Culture 29 (2): 397–411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Regard, Frédéric. 2010. “‘He told me to hold my tongue’: de la violence physique à la subjectivation politique dans The History of Mary Prince.” Caliban: French Journal of English Studies 27: 41–50.Google Scholar
Salih, Sara, ed. 2004. Introduction. In The History of Mary Prince. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Jenny. 2003. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archaeology of Black Women’s Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. “‘Something Akin to Freedom’: The Case of Mary Prince.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 8 (1, Spring): 31–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simmons, K. Merinda. 2009. “Beyond ‘Authenticity’: Migration and the Epistemology of ‘Voice’ in Mary Prince’s History of Mary Prince and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba.” College Literature 36 (4): 75–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Sue. 2011. “New Information on Mary Prince in London.” Notes and Queries 58 (1): 82–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “Pringle v. Cadell and Wood v. Pringle: The Libel Cases over The History of Mary Prince.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40 (1): 113–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Todorova, Kremena T. 2001. “‘I Will Say the Truth to the English People’: The History of Mary Prince and the Meaning of English History.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 43 (3): 285–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitlock, Gillian. 2003. “Merry Christmas, Mary Prince.” Biography 26, no. 3 (Summer): 440–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. “Volatile Subjects: The History of Mary Prince.” In Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, edited by Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould, 72–86. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
. 2000. The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Williamson, Karina, ed. 2008. Contrary Voices: Representations of West Indian Slavery, 1657–1834. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar