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Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Charles Dickens.

Mar 18, 2002, Vol. 7, No. 26
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WHO NOW READS DICKENS?

Harvard's literature professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has been much celebrated in recent weeks for his discovery, purchase, and plans to publish a 300-page handwritten manuscript called "The Bondswoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, a Fugitive Slave, recently Escaped from North Carolina," a novel--apparently written between 1853 and 1860--about a runaway slave who eventually becomes a teacher in New Jersey.

In "The Fugitive," his February New Yorker article describing the manuscript, Gates suggests that "there are a few points at which Hannah's story appears to coincide with historical fact." He mentions in particular a passage describing "winter in Washington with the vividness of someone who may have seen it for herself":

"Gloom everywhere. Gloom up the Potomac; where it rolls among meadows no longer green, and by splendid country seats. Gloom down the Potomac where it washes the sides of huge war-ships. Gloom on the marshes, the fields, and heights. Gloom settling steadily down over the sumptuous habitations of the rich, and creeping through the cellars of the poor. Gloom arresting the steps of chance office-seekers, and bewildering the heads of grave and reverend Senators; for with fog, and drizzle, and a sleety driving mist the night has come at least two hours before its time." [Punctuation added]

Oops. All it actually shows is the author of "The Bondswoman's Narrative" had read Dickens. The once-famous second paragraph of "Bleak House"--which was serialized in America in 1852 and pirated as a book in 1853--runs:

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