Jane Austen's bookshelf

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She read and reread all her books, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn't a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers--and clues about those women are sprinkled like bread crumbs throughout Austen's work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn't a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The phrase "pride and prejudice" came from Frances Burney's second novel, Cecilia. The women who populated Jane Austen's bookshelf profoundly influenced her work. So where had these women gone? Why hadn't Romney--despite her training--ever read them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon? In "Jane Austen's Bookshelf", Romney investigates the lives and work of the women writers whom Austen loved: Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. In each chapter, Romney explores how these women became writers, how they influenced Austen, and how they've been forgotten in the years since. Romney collects the once-famed works of these writers, physically re-creating Austen's bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. In "Jane Austen's Bookshelf" will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.