Listen free for 30 days

Preview
  • The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

  • The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative
  • Written by: Gregg Hecimovich
  • Narrated by: Ron Butler, Janina Edwards
  • Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
  • 1.3 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

Written by: Gregg Hecimovich
Narrated by: Ron Butler, Janina Edwards
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $32.62

Buy Now for $32.62

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography

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 foreword 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
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 1.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 1.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

the fact the story is more like a documentary of the making of the book

all the extra narrative takes away from the story. definitely not the storyline I expected

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!