Born into slavery in the British West Indies, Mary Prince arrived in London from Antigua in 1828 with no status, no power and no voice. She passed through customs as the legal property of one of Britain’s thousands of slave owners.

 

By 1831, however, she had escaped her bondage, joined forces with the Anti-Slavery Society and found a way to publish her life story, becoming the first black woman in Britain to do so and giving a turbo-boost to the abolition campaign at its most pivotal moment.