Romney, Rebecca "Jane Austen's Bookshelf"

Romney, Rebecca "Jane Austen's Bookshelf. The Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend" - 2025

A Christmas present from my son. What a gift!

The subtitle says it all: The Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend. The Legend being Jane Austen.

Rebecca Romney is a rare book dealer and talks to us about her hunt for rare editions. And of the lives of the other female authors from two centuries ago.

Yes, we always read about Jane Austen and what kind of books she is reading. But do we give those authors a second thought? I know I didn't before reading this book.

There are so many different authors from that time. And more women than we might think.

After beginning with Jane Austen, the author takes us to the other ladies who wrote at a time where no women were supposed to write: Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Maria Edgeworth.

While we might not have heard all their names, a lot of the titles they wrote are known to us:

And since I love lists and know that many of you do, as well. Here is a list of the authors and some of their books:

Jane Austen (1775-1817, 41 years)

Frances Burney (1752-1840, 87 years)
Cecilia, 1782
Evelina, 1794
Camilla, 1796

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823, 58 years)
Fountainville Forest, 1794
The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794

Charlotte Lennox (c. 1829-1804, 74-75 years)
The Female Quixote, 1852
Shakespear Illustrated, 1854

Hannah More (1745-1833, 88 years)
Sir Eldred of the Bower, 1776
Percy, 1778
Coelebs in Search of a Wife, 1808
The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, 1810

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806, 57 years)
Emmeline, 1788
Desmond, 1792
The Old Manor House, 1793

Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821, 67 years)
Appearance is Against them, 1785
Mrs. Inchbald, 1786

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (1741-1821, 80 years)
Letters to and  from the late Samuel Johnson, 1788

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849, 81 years)
Tales of Fashionable Live, 1809/1812
Patronage, 1814
Harrington, and Ormond, 1814
Helen, 1834

As you see, most of them got a lot older than our Jane. Oh, would she have lived eighty years, the novels we could have had!!!

I doubt that I willl ever be able to read all those novels but I hope to catch a few.

So, do I recommend this book? If you are a Jane Austen fan and want to know about the women who influenced her, definitely. If you love classics and would like to find some more authors that you haven't read, yet, for sure. If you like to read about books in general, go ahead. What do you think, would you like to read this?

It is definitely a pleasure to accompany the author on her quest to find out more about Jane Austen and her literature.

There are some quotes I just have to mention:

"On the one hand, we come back to certain books because we want to experience, again, the feelings they first sparked. But books inevitable change with us. We notice new aspects of old favourites because our lives are different. Books are not static things. …"

Very true. We think of a book that containes letters and words in a certain order that won't change. But we change. And with it the content of the book. Re-reading does not mean we have forgotten the book and try to remember it, it means we remember the book and want to experience it in a different lifetime.

And this one on not DNF a book:

"But I'm stubborn. I'm one of those readers who struggles to stop reading abook even when I dislike it. Logically, I know this is absurd. But emotionally, it makes me feel like a quitter. This comminemtn to follow through is how I finished James Joyce'S Ulysses, even thouhg I think I understood only about 35 percent of what I was reading. Joyce hadn't defeated me."

I had to smile. I never give JJ a thought when it comes to finishing a tough book. Because a tough book it is. But I was so happy when I finished it. Sometimes that's also great.

She also quotes Italo Calvino from his book "Why Read the Classics?" (IT: Perché leggere i classici?) which I have read and mentioned before. "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say." Totally.

Book Description:

"Who were the women that inspired Jane Austen?

Why have they all but disappeared from our shelves?

When Rebecca Romney discovered a clothbound edition of Evelina by Frances Burney she was delighted to find a novel cherished by Jane Austen. Inspired by the connection between the two writers, she revisited Austen’s books with a new lens, picking out clues sprinkled throughout her works that pointed to the writers she had admired.

Romney noticed that while male writers like Shakespeare and Milton still dominate our shelves, the works of Austen’s favourite authors such as Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe have all but vanished. This ignited a new mission for Romney, she needed to collect Jane Austen’s bookshelf.

Delve into the lives and works of these female writers, and explore their disappearance from history in this page-turning literary adventure."