The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative

By: Gregg Hecimovich

Narrated by: Ron Butler, Janina Edwards

Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story.

In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.

Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.

At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into Civil War.

©2023 Gregg Hecimovich (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Great companion piece to 'The Bondwoman's Narrative’, not so much as a standalone

I initially began reading this prior to 'The Bondwoman's Narrative' after seeing a news article describing the story of Hannah Crafts. It was about how she was deemed the first black female author and it intrigued me. The article initially led me to believe that this was a narrative retelling of the story but it was more of an informational piece. I think that is important to know because I was initially disappointed because I felt that it was just spoiling the story without really telling it. I also felt irritated by the fact that it felt like a whitewashing of her story because it seemed to initially only to refer to the Hannah as hypothetical, even though it was presented as a story proving that she wrote it. I ended up taking a step back and decided to read her actual book first. When I came back, this work was much more enjoyable. Even though it isnt necessarily an exciting read, it did have alot of really good information. There were some moments where I wanted more, because subjects such as "passing" would be brought up and the topic of how slavemasters used "passing" to their advantage at times would come up. The issue I had is that there wasn't much information given there and it was such a provoking subject to bring to light. That is why I feel there is a little left to be desired with this book. Nonetheless it is a good companion piece to the original novel and it does provide good subjects for further investigation. If you are going to read 'The Bondwoman's Narrative' and want further explanation of events within the text it's definitely worth taking a look at.

Amazing research

I'm just stunned at how many details they brought together and they aren't done. I'm sure there's more to be found. I hope Ms. Hannah's pen didn't go completely silent after writing her only known work. I have the book and plan to read it next.

I don't think the book quite conveys the time it took and the beautiful threads that came together for them to be able to tell this story. I feel thankful for all their work.

Stunning Research

A thorough research into possible authors of the novel along with a brilliant rendering of the times during which it was conceived and written including a dissection of different viewpoints. A scholarly presentation that reads as a mystery. I’ll listen to this again after I listen to (read) the novel itself, next on my list.