Michael Peterman is Professor Emeritus at Trent. He is the author of five books, and (co)editor of nine others, including two volumes of Moodie letters. His biography of the Irish-Canadian poet and humorist James McCarroll will be published by McGill–Queen´s University Press in the spring of 2018.

In 1830-31, Susanna Strickland transcribed and helped to edit two West Indian slave narratives at the London home of her friend Thomas Pringle, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society. Published by Pringle as pamphlets in 1831, the narratives of Mary Prince and of Ashton Warner were used in the struggle to abolish slavery in the British Empire.

The two narratives were also crucial to the evolution of Strickland's creative life after her marriage to John Moodie later that spring and their emigration to Canada in 1832. Susanna Moodie became the author of Roughing It in the Bush (1852), a seminal autobiographical work about settling in Upper Canada that would establish her as one of Canada´s most important early writers.

This critical edition brings the two slave narratives together for the first time, complete with introductions and notes, as well as accounts of their initial reception and critical history. Included are key letters of Pringle to Moodie, and some of their respective 'slavery poetry', as well as material relating to the lawsuits that followed the publication of The History of Mary Prince. The inclusion of The Narrative of Ashton Warner, never before republished, enables important new insights into slavery in Saint Vincent and on the genesis of Mary Prince as well as into their role in Moodie´s own development as a writer.