In Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays on the Bondwoman's Narrative

(Paperback)

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Three years ago, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered an unpublished manuscript, The Bondwoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Recently Escaped From North Carolina, which turned out to be the first novel by a female African-American slave ever found, and possibly the first novel written by a black women anywhere. The Bondwoman's Narrative was published in 2002. In Search of Hannah Crafts now brings together twenty-two authorities on African-American studies to examine such issues as authenticity, and the history and criticism of this unique novel, including Nina Baym, Jean Fagan Yellin, William Andrews, Lawrence Buell, Karen Sanchez-Eppler and Shelley Fisher-Fishkin. The Bondwoman's Narrative will take its place in the African-American canon, and In Search of Hannah Crafts is the book that scholars and students of African-American Studies, of women writers, and of slavery, need to have to understand this unprecedented historical and literary event.

Author Bio

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. He has edited many long-lost works, including The Bondwoman's Narrative, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, The Bondwoman's Narrative and The African-American Century and has written several major critical texts. Hollis Robbins is the director of the Black Periodic Literature Project at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University.