The museum Jane Austen’s House in the English village of Chawton recently announced plans, according to The New York Times, to “include details about Austen and her family’s ties to the slave trade, including the fact that her father was a trustee of a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of Antigua,” thus contextualizing the broader sociopolitical reality in which Austen lived and worked. Incidentally, the Chawton House features pieces from the Wedgwood dinner service set belonging to Austen’s family.
