 First edition | |
| Editor | Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Author | Hannah Crafts |
| Cover artist | Giorgetta B. McRee |
| Language | English language |
| Publisher | Warner Books |
Publication date | 2002 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback& Hardback) |
| Pages | 365 |
| ISBN | 0-446-69029-5 (Paperback), ISBN 0-446-53008-5 (Hardback) |
| OCLC | 52082864 |
The Bondwoman's Narrative is a novel by Hannah Crafts whose plot revolves around an escape from slavery in North Carolina. The manuscript was not authenticated and properly published until 2002. Scholars believe that the novel was written between 1853 and 1861. It is one of the first novels by an African-American woman, another is the novel Our Nig by Harriet Wilson, published in 1859, while an autobiography from the same time period is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, published in 1861.[1]
The 2002 publication includes a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor of African-American literature and history at Harvard University, describing his buying the manuscript, verifying it, and research to identify the author.[1] Crafts was believed to be a pseudonym of an enslaved woman who had escaped from the plantation of John Hill Wheeler.
In September 2013, Gregg Hecimovich, a professor of English at Winthrop University, documented the novelist as Hannah Bond, who later adopted her pen name, Crafts, an African-American slave who escaped about 1857 from the plantation of Wheeler in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. She reached the North and settled in New Jersey.[2]
- ^ a b Hannah Crafts (Author), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), The Bondwoman's Narrative, New York: Time-Warner Books, 2002.
- ^ Bosman, Julie (September 18, 2013). "Professor Says He Has Solved a Mystery Over a Slave's Novel". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2013.