The British Library added a poet to its list of figures connected to slavery because his relative more than 300 years ago was involved in colonialism.
Ted Hughes, a poet laureate and Sylvia Plath’s husband until her suicide, was listed on the British Library’s dossier for his relative Nicholas Ferrar’s involvement with the London Virginia Company, which worked to establish colonies in the United States.
“In response to growing scholarly interest worldwide, and in common with best practice in other major heritage collections in the UK and worldwide, the British Library’s Printed Heritage Collections curatorial team has been conducting a continuing programme of research to ensure that our users have an accurate understanding of those parts of the collections which have direct connections with slavery and other aspects of colonial history,” a library spokesman said.
“In addition to these direct connections, curators have noted some other instances where researchers may wish to be aware that an ‘associate’ or indirect connection can be made, through family history or otherwise. One such instance is the reference to Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637), a distant ancestor of English poet and writer Ted Hughes, which is included solely for the sake of completeness and accuracy, and is not, of course, intended in any way whatsoever to affect the reputation of Hughes himself,” the spokesman continued.
Additionally, the “British Library has identified Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde and George Orwell as benefits of slavery through distant relatives,” the Daily Mail reported.
Hughes died in 1998 and wrote collections of work such as The Hawk in the Rain. His ancestor Ferrar was born in 1592.
“To put a black mark against a 20th-century figure because of the actions of someone born in 1592 is absurd. But the woke approach to history treats slavery and colonialism as a kind of ‘original sin’, whereby all white people are somehow guilty for what white people did centuries ago. It is ahistorical and toxic,” outlet Spiked reported.
