Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Seller’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend by Rebecca Romney

What did Jane Austen read? And how did those books shape the sharp wit, elegant prose, and keen social insight we so admire in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and her other classics?

In Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, rare book dealer and historian Rebecca Romney offers a captivating answer.

Rather than focusing solely on Austen’s own writing, Romney leads readers on a tour of the literary influences that helped her find her voice. She highlights eight women writers who were essential to Austen’s development during a time of great experimentation with the novel: Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. Many of these authors were bestsellers or cultural voices in their time but have long been marginalized — a gap Romney notes that feminist literary recovery efforts have worked and are working now to repair. Romney’s accessible scholarship gives these women renewed visibility, showing how their themes of sentiment, morality, independence, and satire resonated with Austen and helped define the literary conversation she both inherited and transformed.

What also sets this book apart is Romney’s background in rare books. She weaves in glimpses of the rare book world — how collectors value early editions, what makes a book “rare,” and the detective work involved in tracing provenance. These insights lend an extra layer of richness for readers curious about the life of books beyond the text itself and offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Austen’s literary world is preserved and treasured today, especially with her 250th birthday celebrations approaching in December.

Romney’s tone is welcoming, illuminating, and deeply engaging. She manages to balance literary history with cultural commentary, and her enthusiasm for the books and the eight authors — and for Austen herself — is contagious. This book is a delight for Austen fans, of course, but also for anyone curious about the history and evolution of the novel or the ways in which the power and love of reading can shape a reader’s worldview and perhaps his or her own bookshelf.

~Jessie von Hippel