Author of the first female slave narrative from the Americas and the first account of the life of a black woman published in Britain, Mary Prince was born into slavery in Bermuda. She was subsequently sold to Turks and Antigua, and taken to London in 1828, where she sought the protection of the Moravian mission. The impulse to record her story came from Prince herself, who explains: "what my eyes have seen I think it is my duty to relate; for few people in England know what slavery is. I have been a slave - I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows; and I would have all the good people in England to know it too, that they may break our chains, and set us free" (11). Prince's narrative offers a decisive response to pro-slavery arguments: "I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this country say, that the slaves do not need better usage, and do not want to be free [...] I say, Not so. How can slaves be happy when they have the halter round their neck and the whip upon their back?" (22-23). An additional short text, 'Narrative of Louis Asa-Asa, a captured African' (42-44), is reproduced as an appendix to this pamphlet. Asa-Asa had been shipwrecked in December 1825 off the coast of Cornwall on a French slave ship, the Perle. His narrative ends with a plea for Britain to end the foreign slave trade: "I think the King of England might stop it, and this is why I wish him to know it all" (44).