The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of ‘The Bondswoman’s Narrative’

Furman University English professor Hecimovich (Puzzling the Reader) delivers a captivating biography of Hannah Crafts, America’s first known Black female novelist. A manuscript titled The Bondswoman’s Narrative, written in the 1850s, was authenticated and published for the first time by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2002, though the life story of the author, Hannah Crafts, remained largely unknown. After 20 years of research, Hecimovich has pieced together an account of the writer’s life, identifying her as Hannah Bond. Born into slavery in 1826 Berti County, N.C., Bond was brought up working as a domestic servant in the home of her enslavers, Lewis Bond and Catherine Pugh Bond. She escaped to New York in 1857, with part of The Bondswoman’s Narrative hidden among her belongings; she completed it while in hiding, when she also adopted the last name Crafts, after the Quaker family who harbored her. She eventually settled in New York under the married name Hannah Vincent and, according to census records, lived at least into the 1910s. Drawing on extensive archival research and deep literary analysis (Bond was highly influenced by Charles Dickens’s Bleak House), Hecimovich sheds light on key aspects of Bond’s life, including her friendships with other women who escaped from slavery and whose experiences she worked into her novel. Part literary detective story, part suspenseful escape narrative, this impressive account ties together its many disparate threads into a riveting whole. It’s a must-read. (Oct.)