Here is information about a historic family:

Devoney Looser, Regents and Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University, has uncovered new information on the family of English novelist Jane Austen that establishes the family’s direct ties to the anti-slavery movement.

With an increased worldwide awareness surrounding the history of race and racial justice, the subject of Austen and her family connections to colonialism and slavery recently came under renewed scrutiny. Through research she conducted over the past year, Looser discovered several new facts that deepen and further complicate the previous understanding of the Austen family’s relationship to the institution of slavery. The information was published as the cover feature in the May 21 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.Devoney Looser / ASU photoDevoney Looser, Regents and Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University, has uncovered new information on the family of English novelist Jane Austen that establishes the family’s direct ties to the anti-slavery movement.

“Jane Austen and her family have rightly come under scrutiny,” Looser said. “But a reductive story was forming that her family — and, by association, she — was pro-slavery. What my work adds is that her immediate family might also be described as anti-slavery. So the best answer to the oversimplified question, ‘Was the Austen family pro-slavery or anti-slavery?’ — is both.”

You can read the full article by Emily Balli published in the Arizona State University web site at: https://bit.ly/2RURTd0.