The Bondwoman's Narrative [Paperback]

Hannah Crafts (Author), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Tells the story of Hannah Crafts, a young slave working on a wealthy North Carolina plantation, who runs away in a bid for freedom up North.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Few events are more thrilling than the discovery of a buried treasure. Some years ago, when scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was leafing through an auction catalog, he noticed a listing for an unpublished, clothbound manuscript thought to date from the 1850s: "The Bondwoman's Narrative, by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave, Recently Escaped from North Carolina." Gates realized that, if genuine, this would be the first novel known to have been written by a black woman in America, as well as the only one by a fugitive slave. He bought the manuscript (there was no competing bid) and began the exhilarating task of confirming the racial identity of the author and the approximate date of composition (circa 1855-59). Gates's excited descriptions of his detective work in the introduction to The Bondwoman's Narrative will make you want to find promising old manuscripts of your own. He also proposes a couple candidates for authorship, assuming that Hannah Crafts was the real or assumed name of the author, and not solely a pen name.

If Gates is right (his introduction and appendix should convince just about everyone), The Bondwoman's Narrative is a tremendous discovery. But is it a lost masterpiece? No. The novel draws so heavily on the conventions of mid-19th-century fiction--by turns religious, gothic, and sentimental--that it does not have much flavor of its own. The beginning of chapter 13 is a close paraphrase (virtually a cribbing) of the opening of Dickens's Bleak House. This borrowing seems to have escaped Gates, although he does quote the assessment of one scholar, the librarian Dorothy Porter Wesley, who had owned the manuscript before he acquired it, that "the best of the writer's mind was religious and emotional and in her handling of plot the long arm of coincidence is nowhere spared." Although not a striking literary contribution, The Bondwoman's Narrative is well worth reading on historical grounds, especially since it was never published. As Gates argues, these pages provide our first "unedited, unaffected, unglossed, unaided" glimpse into the mind of a fugitive slave. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

HNothing intrigues quite the way an old manuscript does: there's the story told in its pages, but there's also the story of the pages. In this volume's lively, provocative introduction, Gates, Harvard chair of African-American studies, describes his discovery of a handwritten manuscript from the collection of Dorothy Porter Wesley, the famous Howard University librarian, in an auction. Identified in the auction catalogue as a "fictionalized biography... of the early life and escape of one Hannah Crafts," the manuscript, Gates thought, might be the "first novel written by a woman who had been a slave." After purchasing it, he undertook the painstaking work of authenticating it and determining its author. Though Dr. Joe Nickell (the sleuth who proved the Jack the Ripper diaries fraudulent) firmly limits the manuscript's composition to 1853 to 1861 and Gates locates a few candidates for authorship, the historical Hannah Crafts remains elusive. Whoever Hannah Crafts was--and about that there is sure to be some discussion--she was a talented storyteller. Though Crafts appears self-taught and borrows from many sources--influences include other slave narratives, 19th-century sentimental and gothic novels and, as Gates noted in a letter to the New Yorker, Charles Dickens--she propels her story along, vividly describing the heroes and villains she entangles in her multiple plots. A mulatto, Hannah grows up a house slave in Virginia, learning to read in secret. When her master at last marries, Hannah becomes a maid to the new mistress, a woman who seems haunted. In fact, she is hunted: someone who holds proof that her mother is a slave is blackmailing her. Knowing her mistress will be sold if exposed, Hannah encourages her to flee, and flees with her. Thus begins Hannah's journey, as she passes through the hands of prison guard, slave trader, benevolent caretaker, mean and petty masters and finally to freedom. The style is sentimental and effusive, but it is also winning. Crafts's portrayal of the Wheelers--a small-minded but ambitious couple who prefer to "live at the public expense"--is incisive and utterly familiar. Though Gates chose to touch up Crafts's punctuation, he left her spelling as is and included her revisions, which were remarkably few. Crafts clearly understood the needs of her narrative and the conventions of the 19th-century novel in a way that many first novelists (of any century) don't. While scholars will have to decide whether this is "the unadulterated `voice' of the fugitive slave herself," lay readers can simply enjoy Crafts's remarkable story and Gates's own story of discovering her.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 365 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446690295
• ISBN-13: 978-0446690294
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LANDMARK MEMOIR, April 21, 2002

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bondwoman's Narrative (Hardcover)

It is one thing to read about the injustices of slavery from a historical or even an observer's point of view. It is quite something else to learn of the daily life of a slave in the indentured person's own voice. Such is the case with "The Bondwoman's Narrative" penned by a female slave in the 1850s.

According to the editor this manuscript has existed for 140 years, and is quite probably the "earliest known novel by a female African-American slave and the earliest known novel by a black woman anywhere." Also according to Mr. Gates a slave escaped from a North Carolina plantation in 1857 and was able to reach New Jersey. It is his contention that she is the author of this book.

Whether one wishes to question the authenticity of his identification or not is quite immaterial considering the compelling material within "The Bondwoman's Narrative." The relationship between ladies' maids and their mistresses is revealed in sharp detail, as are the offensive overtures by a relentless master. The slave and narrator is presented not as a human being but as chattel, valued only for what she might bring on the block.

Ms. Craft has ably evoked pictures of the old South as well as the horrific conditions imposed by bondage. It is a miracle that these people could even hope for freedom. It is a wonder that this manuscript was brought to light at last.

- Gail Cooke

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Fascinating Narratives in One, April 26, 2002

By 

Connie Ann Kirk (New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bondwoman's Narrative (Hardcover)

The first story is one of discovery and authentication on the part of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.. This story will be fascinating to scholars and others interested in how original manuscripts are found and in the problems and procedures for authenticating them as artifacts as well as resolving other issues surrounding their authorship. This mystery story continues because Gates is on a mission in this section to find the "real" Hannah Crafts. I kept reading quickly, following his strains of research with almost as much excitement and suspense as I did in reading Hannah's narrative itself. Hannah mentions names that Gates traces back to real people, and he gradually uncovers dots, then connects them for the reader, showing just how exciting scholarship of this kind can be as a human endeavor. As an American literature scholar myself, I finished Gates's narrative wanting to run out and search for Hannah Crafts as well [if I only had the time and energy with all the other mysteries I'm already trying to solve].

The second narrative, of course, and really the most important, is Hannah Craft's novel itself, which is thought so far to be autobiographical, in which a first person narrator describes her experience as a house slave and her eventual escape from a plantation near Wilmington, NC, via the Underground Railroad to New Jersey. The novel is a quick read, like a popular novel today with traces of the 19th C. sentimental novels of its day, with suspense and Dickens-like characterizations. There is a noted motif of "passing" (as one race for another and one gender for another) that is fascinating to trace throughout the story. Perhaps the great "pass" of all is the unanswered question about the racial identity of the author, a question that bothers some greatly that it is even being asked and is critically important to others that it be answered as accurately as possible.

Gates includes material that makes this version of the book "teachable" as well (he plans a later scholarly edition)--a listing of the library holdings Crafts is presumed to have had access to; passages from Dickens's BLEAK HOUSE set side by side with echoes from Crafts's novel; chapter notes by the editor that point to issues in similar narratives by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, etc.

Whether you eventually "buy" Gates's claims about its authenticity and importance or not, the book provides a focal point for discussions of many issues, both for the general reader and the specialist in American literature, American studies, history, gender studies, textual studies, and many others. It's also a peek inside the work of literary scholars, which reveals just how much fun our detective work (often thought to be dry and dusty by others) really is.

I say, read it, and let the conversations, and thought-provoking arguments, begin!

~Prof. Connie Ann Kirk

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and Unprecedented, April 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Bondwoman's Narrative (Hardcover)

"The Bondwoman's Narrative" is an unprecedented literary event. This manuscript, recently discovered by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the only known novel to have been written by an African American slave. It might possibly be the first manuscript to have been written by a black woman...anywhere. Not only is the narrative unprecedented, it is a suspenseful and engrossing account of a young slave who "passes" for white in her attempt to find her way to freedom.

The bondwoman is Hannah Crafts, a mulatto and a slave, who wrote her story as an autobiographical novel. Hannah Crafts was not uneducated, she was self-educated. And, as anyone familiar with world literature will realize, Hannah Crafts, may have been very well educated, indeed. As we read her story, written in an effusive style, we realize that she was well aware of the limitations and injustices society inflicted on persons of color in 19th century America. What she didn't realize is that the freedom and life of the plantation's mistress is soon to be in as much peril as is her own and that their destinies will intertwine. Is Hannah Crafts story an autobiographical rendition or is it a flight of fancy, albeit a very good flight of fancy? I think it is up to each individual reader to judge.

"The Bondwoman's Narrative" really doesn't tell us anything new about the times in which Hannah Crafts lived. It's significance lies not in the facts it presents (although they are interesting), but in its historical value. The fact that this is, quite probably, the first narrative to have been written by a black woman makes "The Bondwoman's Narrative" unique and unprecedented and a true literary event.

Almost as interesting as the story of Hannah, herself, is Professor Gates' introduction in which he details his own search for the real Hannah Crafts and the true facts of her life.

Although the details in this book are details we have read before, perhaps several times before, we have not read them as presented by Hannah Crafts. The experience of slavery was important in shaping the character of America and, because of this importance, Hannah Crafts' voice is a voice that should be heard. I don't think anyone who reads this unique and sometimes very lovely book, will ever regret it.