Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses enslavement.

Gates bought the manuscript of The Bondwoman’s Narrative at an auction in 2001. It was previously owned by Dorothy Porter Wesley, an eminent African American librarian, biographer, and curator. While Gates believed that the text was “possibly the first novel written by a black woman and definitely the first novel written by a woman who had been a slave” (10), he had to verify its authenticity. Before the narrative even begins, a lengthy introduction recounts the lengths to which Gates went to ensure the manuscript was authentic; many of the accounts and reports he finds are provided in the appendix. A companion text, In Search of Hannah Crafts (2004), details the opinions of many scholars who were consulted on areas such as the manuscript’s ink, writing style, content accuracy, and paper type. For example, Craft’s descriptions of self-emancipation routes and the social structures within communities of enslaved people reflect scholars’ current understanding of the era. They reached a consensus that the text is an authentic narrative written between 1850 and 1860.

The manuscript, when found, had not been through any editing or printing process.