Three of Jane Austen's six brothers were anti-slavery activists – recent research provides further evidence of their very own views

More than two centuries after Jane Austen died in 1817, many fans of the English author wish to know the way she addresses the key problems with her time, including Race, colonialism and slavery.

Fierce debates proceed about what she could have been pondering, but her family's involvement within the abolitionist movement is progressively coming to light.

After Searching through newspapers and archives from the nineteenth century As recent information, I discovered that three of Austen's brothers publicly participated within the abolition movement within the years following her death.

The efforts of one in every of her brothers, which I actually have unearthed from historical records, shall be described here for the primary time and shall be included in my next book, Wild for Austen, in 2025.

Race and slavery in Austen’s novels

Many readers assume that Austen was criticizing the violence and suffering of colonial slavery, but there isn’t any consensus on this issue. Austen, the creator of Pride and Prejudice and other classic novels, uses the words “slave” and “slavery” nearly a dozen times in her novels.

Her last unfinished novel “Sanditon” incorporates a personality of mixed race named Miss LambeShe is described as a “half-mulatto” heiress from the West Indies.

The shy heroine Fanny Price from “Mansfield Park” asks her domineering uncle Sir Thomas Bertram – himself a slave owner – for Question in regards to the slave tradeReaders usually are not told how he responds, only that she drops the topic when his response is met with “such dead silence” from her uninterested cousins.

In “Emma,” the penniless Jane Fairfax is controversial compares the position as governess with the misery of the slave trade. She describes each enslaved people and governesses as “victims”.

Experts disagree whether these examples show Austen's tacit acceptance or implicit criticism of slavery.

Great Britain and colonial slavery

From the 1660s Britain brutally deported about 3.4 million Africans to be enslaved in America – about half 1,000,000 people died throughout the gruesome journey that was generally known as Middle passageMany of those enslaved people ended up within the British colonies within the Caribbean, the so-called West Indies.

Decades of abolitionist campaigns within the 18th century led to the ban on the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807.

It took greater than 20 years of further activism before Parliament In 1833, slavery was abolished in most British coloniesThis was greater than three many years before the The USA followed this instance.

Although Austen died before the abolition of slavery, the anti-slavery movement was in full swing during her lifetime. Her writings give few clues to her political beliefs, but one surviving letter mentions her love for the creator and noted Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson.

However, there isn’t any evidence that they freely contributed to the work of his campaigns or other Anti-slavery societies.

Profits from slavery

Some of Austen’s relatives had direct economic links to slavery.

One of them was her aunt Jane Leigh Perrot, who was born right into a wealthy slave-owning family in Barbados. This aunt had married the rich brother of Jane Austen's mother. The Leigh Perrots should inherit a share of her deceased father's plantationTheir joint fortune was eventually passed on to the descendants of James Austen-LeighJane's eldest brother, the In 1837 the surname Leigh was added.

The Austen family had other connections to slave owners.

Until 2021, many scientists believed Rev. George AustenJane Austen's father, benefited financially from the Antigua plantation of his former Oxford student, James Langford Nibbs. Rev. Austen is alleged to have been the trustee of this plantation, but there was considerable misunderstanding about his alleged role.

Rev. Austen was actually co-administrator of Nibbs' marriage contract of 1760, having just served as a priest who married Nibbs and his wifeas I came upon. Rev. Austen's unpaid co-administrative position “would never have burdened him with duties connected with the management of a plantation,” because the legal scholar John Avery Jones argued.

Research into the connections between the Austen family and slavery continues.

3 brothers who desired to abolish slavery

In the course of my research it got here to light that three of the Jane's six brothers later became publicly involved within the abolition movement.

One of them was Captain Charles John Austen. He supervised the illegal slave trade within the West Indies within the Royal Navy. He wrote a letter to an English newspaper about his capture of a slave ship in August 1826 and shared his observations of the terrible conditions the enslaved people on board were subjected to. However, his actions enabled the slave trader to flee, as I actually have seen in Investigating long-overlooked government documents.

Better known was the abolitionist work of Jane's brother Henry Thomas Austen, a failed banker who became a priest. He served as Delegate to the World Convention against Slavery in London in 1840, as I first reported in 2021. This fact had not been noted before, apparently because Henry was then using the name Rev. HT Austen. Earlier scholars hadn't realized that he was Jane's brother.

To this growing abolitionist history of the Austen family, we will now add a 3rd Austen brother, Francis “Frank” William Austen.

It has long been known that Frank, a naval officer, privately expressed abolitionist views. My recent research has revealed that after Jane's death in 1817, but before the British government passed the 1833 Act, he was openly lively as an area anti-slavery activist. Law for the Abolition of Slavery.

This makes Frank the primary known anti-slavery activist in Jane Austen's immediate family.

A motion to abolish slavery

A temporary announcement within the Hampshire Chronicle of February 6, 1826, states: “The Magistrates of Gosport, in response to the desire of many of the inhabitants, have called a meeting for Friday next, to consider the propriety of petitioning Parliament for the abolition of slavery in the West Indian colonies.”

Frank Austen took a number one role there, a incontrovertible fact that had gone unnoticed until then. At this meeting, “a petition to the House of Commons calling for the abolition of slavery in the West Indian colonies was approved.” Captain Austen of the Royal Navy – Frank Austen – moved for approval of the petition, which was then accepted.

The abolitionist work within the seaside town of Gosport was a part of a national movement. Many towns submitted petitions to the unattentive Parliament. In nearby Portsmouth, a 20-metre-long petition bearing the signatures of three,187 people was sent out, “praying for the abolition of black slavery in the West Indies,” based on one other report within the Hampshire Chronicle.

“Pray” here means “ask,” although there was also a spiritual aspect involved. Prominent members of the British clergy in Bath played a number one role in preparing the petition. In Gosport, nonetheless, the anti-slavery motion was led by Frank Austen, together with a lawyer, a surgeon, a grocer, and a baker.

The resolution adopted by Frank Austen described slavery as “repulsive” and called for “measures … which will enable the immediate improvement of the condition of the slave population, and the gradual but complete abolition of slavery,” based on a report within the Hampshire Telegraph on February 13, 1826.

Learn more

The Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton, England, there was recently an exhibition about Frank Austen, the born 250 years ago, in 1774There is more to learn not only about Jane Austen's own views on slavery, but in addition about Frank Austen himself.

The museum also announced the acquisition of Frank’s unpublished memoirs and sketchbook, for which it Crowdsourcing transcriptionOnce the memoirs are publicly available, they could shed further light on his beliefs.

In the meantime, scholars proceed to look for brand new facts, speculate about what Jane Austen's novels say between the lines, and investigate what she might need believed about slavery and abolition. This is occurring within the run-up to the 250th anniversary of her birth on 16 December 2025.

Taken together, these findings on the abolitionist activism of three Jane Austen's six brothers support the speculation that at the top of her life, which was cut short by illness on the age of 41, the novelist may herself have been on the solution to becoming a passionate, lively and public advocate of the abolition of slavery.