Review: Jane Austen's Bookshelf (by Rebecca Romney)

My Rating: 5 stars 

Happy New Year!

My first read of the year is actually a book I started during the last week of 2025.  Rebecca Romney’s Jane Austen’s Bookshelf was part of my December “Jane Austen read-a-thon” project to commemorate Austen’s (one of my favorite authors) 250^th birthday and my original intention was to finish reading it by the end of the year.  But that didn’t end up happening and I’m not sad about it at all because instead of rushing through the book, I was able to really savor it.

Romney’s central goal with this book is to understand and explore the women writers who came before Austen and, in many cases, not only had an outsized influence on Austen’s work, but were also counted among the author’s favorites (as per her own letters) -- yet over the years, these writers had largely been either “erased” or “excluded” from the Western canon.  Romney is very honest about the fact that, throughout her life, she regularly purchased and read books written by “authoritative” surveyors of literature who claimed that Austen was the “first great woman writer in English” – aka there were no female writers in English who came before her and even if there were, none of them lived up to her genius so they weren’t worth reading. As a rare book seller (and collector) and huge Austen fan, Romney decided to “right her wrong” so to speak by utilizing her “tools of the trade” to investigate why these women writers – almost all of whom are mentioned in either Austen’s novels or her personal letters -- had disappeared from most literary discourse (outside of dedicated academic scholarship). This quote from the book’s introduction perfectly sums up Romney’s project: “As repayment for what she had given me, I hoped I could offer Austen this in return: a collection that reunites the novels she read, and a book honoring her own favorite authors…I wanted to know who these women were, what they wrote, and why they were no longer part of the canon.  I would read their books and I would collect copies that appealed to me for their historical interest.  I would fill Jane Austen’s Bookshelf.”

This is a fascinating book that not only serves as a “primer” of sorts on 18^th century female novelists, but also a delightful glimpse into the world of rare book collecting (something which I had no knowledge of previously).  Romney begins the book with a chapter on Jane Austen (of course), then traces her “literary ancestry” with chapters on Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth.  Romney doesn’t just provide biographical details about each writer though – she also reads the works by each of these authors and teases out the connection to Austen (some are more obvious due to direct references that Austen herself made, while others are inferred though highly plausible references). Reading this book from the perspective of a fellow Austen fan and someone who had also studied British literature in some capacity, it’s obvious to me that Romney had done her research (and done it well!), as she situates each author in the historical period of their time while also incorporating important historical and literary contexts to support her arguments.  For me though, what makes this book stand apart from other Austen-themed literary-analysis type books is the way she incorporates her own personal experience – observations from her profession in the rare book collecting space as well as detailed analysis from her own extensive reading of both Austen’s works and each author’s – to convincingly argue why these forgotten writers should be more widely read.  More importantly, she does so in way that’s sincere, witty, relatable, and easily accessible – enough scholarly detail to put it at the same level as academic literary criticism, yet written in a down-to-earth manner where it doesn’t feel like I’m reading literary criticism at all.

Reading this book not only makes me see Austen’s works in a new light, it has also gotten me interested in reading these authors’ works as well.  The way Romney describes these works and her experiences reading them, as well as her observations of the connections to Austen’s works, honestly fascinated me to the point that I wanted to experience these “source texts” for myself (one of the things I did after I finished reading was to immediately put these authors’ novels on my TBR).  This book is one of the best modern-day analyses of Austen’s works that I’ve read so far and definitely a worthy entry into the canon (if there is one) of Austen scholarship.  With that said, the biggest takeaway I got from this book is the importance of reading something because we “want to” rather than because we “should” (i.e.: it’s part of the “classics” canon).  I absolutely love this section from Romney’s concluding chapter: “Building this collection led me to question the canon.  I did not throw it out, but I’ve learned the confidence to distinguish between the taste of ‘authorities’ and my own.  Look into the past and read whatever resonates with you, not what we’re told are the ‘best’ authors.  You don’t have to read any of the books I read in my investigation.  [Italo] Calvino argues that, outside of school, ‘we don’t read classics out of duty or respect, only read out of love’.”   Wonderfully stated words of wisdom that I know will stay with me for a long time to come.

P.S.:  Romney’s book inspired me to take a quick look back at the course I took a few months ago on 18^th Century British Literature for my English Literature degree – sure enough, there was only one female writer covered in that course (yes, you guessed it – Jane Austen).  This also led me down the rabbit hole of checking out syllabi for courses on 18^th century British Literature from various schools and indeed, there are few (if any) female writers covered in those (Austen is actually not in many of those syllabi either, as some consider her a 19^th century writer due to most of her novels being published after 1800).  From what I could see based on my own studies as well as glancing through these syllabi is that the “canon” when it comes to 18^th century British Literature consists mostly of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Henry Fielding, Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Samuel Richardson, and a rotation of other male poets/playwrights/writers – some more obscure and less prolific than the women writers discussed in Romney’s book.  All this tells me that Romney was definitely on to something with her project!