The Search For Hannah Crafts
- Feb 1, 2024
- 1 min read
By Jason Miller
From Walter Magazine
A disheveled manuscript titled The Bondwoman’s Narrative was listed only as “Lot 30: Unpublished Original Manuscript” when it appeared in a Swann Auction Galleries catalog in 2001. Written between 1853-1859, few people knew the hand-sewn pages pressed clumsily between two boards even existed. Barely meeting its retainer, the manuscript received only one bid.
But The Bondwoman’s Narrative became a bestseller when it was published in 2002, after being quietly purchased and then authenticated by esteemed historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. As news spread that this was the first known novel written by an African American woman, the skill of the book’s writer amazed and confounded readers and scholars like. People publicly asked, “How could an African American woman of this era write such elegant prose?” And if so, “Who was she?”
