Why it’s so hard to know what Jane Austen thought about slavery

Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is a podcast from The Conversation celebrating 250 years since the author’s birth. In each episode, we’ll be investigating a different aspect of Austen’s personality by interrogating one of her novels with leading researchers. Along the way, we’ll visit locations important to Austen to uncover a particular aspect of her life and the times she lived in. In episode 3, we look at her politics, and what we can learn about her views on slavery through the pages of Mansfield Park.