Jane Austen's bookshelf A rare book collector's quest to find the women writers who shaped a legend

Rebecca Romney

Large print - 2025

"Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen's books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. But Austen wasn't a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers-and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen's work. The women that populated Jane Austen's bookshelf profoundly influenced her work: Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had ...good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn't Romney-despite her training-ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? Jane Austen's Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen's heroes-women writers who were erased from the Western canon-to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten."-- more