The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831) was the first female slave narrative from the Americas. The Story of Mattie J. Jackson (1866) recounts a quest for personal freedom and ends with a family reunion in the North after the Civil War. The Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Colored Woman (1863) is the tale of a ninety-seven-year-old ex-slave who became a preacher. Lucy A. Delaney's From the Darkness Cometh the Light or Struggles for Freedom (c. 1891) records a former slave's achievements in the quarter-century after the end of the Civil War. Kate Drumgoold and Annie L. Burton also describe their successes in the post-war North while eulogizing black motherhood in the ante-bellum South.
Six Women's Slave narratives contains stories that embody most of the predominant themes and narrative forms found in African-American women's autobiographies from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning with the first female slave narrative from the Americas, The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831), the collection includes writings by 'Old Elizabeth, ' Mattie J. Jackson, Lucy A. Delaney, Kate Drumgoold, and Annie L. Burton.
