Slave's Story (I)

choi

Julie Bosman, Professor Says He Has Solved a Mystery Over a Slave's Novel. New York Times, Sept 19, 2013 (front page).
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/1 ... a-slaves-novel.html

Note:
(a)
(i) Hannah Crafts, The Bondwpman's Narrative. Warner Books (now Grand Central Publishing), 2002.
(ii) The manuscript can be viewed online in

The Bondwoman's narrative / by Hannah Crafts, a fugitive slave recently escaped from North Carolina. Beinecke Digital Collections, Yale University, undated.
http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3520207
(iii) bondman (n; First Known Use: 13th century): "SLAVE, SERF"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bondman

, which is different from "bondsman."

(b)
(i) Bleak House
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House
(a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly instalments between March 1852 and September 1853; John Jarndyce – an unwilling party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, guardian of Richard, Ada, and Esther, and owner of Bleak House)

, whose section 1 Synopsis is too long.
(ii) Jarndyce v Jarndyce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarndyce_v_Jarndyce

Who were the litigants in the case?  To wit: who is plaintiff and defendant?  Well, I can not find it. This is one illuminating description:

Michael J Cummings, Plot Summary, in Bleak House. Cummings Study Guide, 2003.
www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides6/Bleak.html‎
("The most famous Chancery case is Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, which clogs the docket for years�so long, in fact, that the original litigants are dead and no one fully understands all the intricacies of the case. The lawsuit brings together three innocent young people at an estate called Bleak House, located in Hertfordshire near St Albans, about twenty miles north of London. Bleak House was passed down to kindly John Jarndyce, a well-to-do bachelor and a descendant of one of the original litigants. Although named in Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, he pays little attention to the case, realizing that only the grasping lawyers and venal court officials stand to benefit from it.")

(c) "The professor, Gregg Hecimovich, the chairman of the English department at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC"
(i) Gregg Hecimovich
http://www.winthrop.edu/cas/faculty/default.aspx?id=14122
(ii) Winthrop University
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winthrop_University
(public; "Founded in 1886 by David Bancroft Johnson, who * * * received a $1,500 grant from Robert Charles Winthrop, a Boston philanthropist and chair of the Peabody Education [Fund]* * * to educate young women to teach in the public schools")
(iii) Peabody Education Fund
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peabody_Education_Fund
(established by George Peabody [whose birth place was reamed in 1868 after him: now City of Peabody, Massachusetts] in 1867 for the purpose of promoting "intellectual, moral, and industrial education in the most destitute portion of the Southern States")
  
(d) "That tale closely mirrors the story of [Hannah] Bond. Enslaved on a plantation in Murfreesboro, NC"

Murfreesboro, North Carolina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murfreesboro,_North_Carolina
(a town; The first known deed to property in the area is a land grant dated November 5, 1714 to Henry Wheeler for a tract on the Meherrin River; On May 27, 1746, James Jordon Scott sold 150 acres (0.61 km2) on the Meherrin River, (part of Wheeler's original grant) to an Irish immigrant, William Murfree of Nansemond County, Virginia)

(e) "Scholars later discovered that the author borrowed passages from an array of published texts, including 'Jane Eyre,' by Charlotte Brontë, and 'Rob Roy,' by Walter Scott."
(i) Jane Eyre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre
(published in 1847)
(ii) Charlotte Brontë
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB
(1816-1855; her father changed the spelling of surname from Brunty to Brontë)
(iii) Rob Roy (novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Roy_(novel)
(1817; Rob Roy MacGregor, known as Rob Roy [where Rob is the short form of "Robert"])
(iv) Walter Scott
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott
(1871-1832; Scottish)

(f) name.
(i) The English surname Bond: "The status of the peasant farmer fluctuated considerably during the Middle Ages * * * Among Germanic peoples who settled to an agricultural life, the term came to signify a farmer holding lands from, and bound by loyalty to, a lord; from this developed the sense of a free landholder as opposed to a serf. In England after the Norman Conquest the word sank in status and became associated with the notion of bound servitude."
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford Univ Press.
(ii) The English surname Crafts is variant of Croft, the latter being derived from Middle English croft: "an arable enclosure, normally adjoining a house"
(iii) The English surname Winthrop is from name of "places in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire called Winthorpe. The former is named with the Old English personal name or byname Wine, meaning ‘friend’, + Old Norse þorp ‘settlement’. In the latter the first element is a contracted form of the Old English personal name Wigmund, composed of the elements wig ‘war’ + mund ‘protection’, or the Old Norse equivalent, Vígmundr."
(iv) "Hollis Robbins, the chairwoman of the department of humanities at John Hopkins University"
(A) The English surname Hollis is "for someone who lived where holly trees grew, from Middle English holi(n)s, plural of holin, holi(e) (Old English hole(g)n)."
(B) The English surname Robbins means son of Robin. The latter (surname Robin) is from personal [or given] name Robin: "a pet form of Robert, composed of the short form Rob + the hypocoristic suffix -in."