misread the Regency era, not to mention the domestic and the political; to have never seen a Wedgwood patch box circa 1800 with a supplicating Black figure in chains illustrated upon it, pleading, “Am I not a man and a brother?” If Austen’s contemporaries could bear storing rouge in these boxes and spooning sugar out of these pots, we can certainly bear talking about the fact that they existed—and what that existence might mean for us.
