The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman's Narrative

A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman's Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author's identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author's name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story.

In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond "Crafts." She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity--as Hannah Crafts--to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.

Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman's Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts's friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.

At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America's slide into Civil War.

Author: Gregg Hecimovich
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: 10/17/2023
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.42lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.01d
ISBN: 9780062334732


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 05/01/2023 pg. 24
Publishers Weekly 08/28/2023

About the Author
Hecimovich, Gregg: - GREGG HECIMOVICH is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. He is the author of four previous books and a wide range of articles that have appeared in leading scholarly journals, and is recipient of the UNC Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award, among other teaching awards. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife, and their two daughters.