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

Description

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 discovered an unpublished manuscript, The Bondwoman's Narrative, By Hannah Crafts, A Fugitive Recently Escaped From North Carolina, which turned out to be the first novel by a female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.

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.