Jane Austen's Bookshelf Audiobook By Rebecca Romney cover art

Jane Austen's Bookshelf

A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

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Jane Austen's Bookshelf

By: Rebecca Romney
Narrated by: Rebecca Romney
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From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure featuring “your favorite author’s favorite authors” (Today)—the women who inspired Jane Austen—that’s “a meditation on reading and writing, on honesty and self-discovery—and on what books can teach us, if we let them” (The Washington Post).

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. She read and reread them, 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, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. 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? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon?

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. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating 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. 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. Art & Literature Authors Biographies & Memoirs Literary History & Criticism Women Inspiring
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Critic reviews

"Rebecca Romney, an author and dealer in rare books, narrates her intriguing exploration of eighteenth-century women writers in a mellow, welcoming voice...The result is engaging, deeply informative, and often fun—particularly for lovers of rare books and Austen."
Fascinating Content • Informative Research • Authentic Narration • Inspiring Discoveries • Accessible Writing

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I love the rabbit hole that the book took you, looking forward to the other authors I've been introduced.

all the other women who were authors at time of Jane Austen.

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Perfect for uncovering incredible female authors that were lost through time and lack of recognition.

Loved it

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This is the best nonfiction book I have read in a very long time. I inhaled it.

Insightful

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This is a wonderful book. While not perfect (can we, please, in this day and age and especially in a book like this that focuses on female experience, stop with this "corsets were evil devices of torture" propaganda???), I adore the project of this book. I also love how it was done - part memoir of the author, part memoir of these female authors, part pure information - which made it a heartfelt instead of a dry read and gave readers easy way to emotionally connect (at least it made it easy for me to emotionally connect) with these women. Not only that, but it also put some books on my TBR, which is a wonderful bonus of reading this book (I am super excited to try The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox).
I dearly hope that the author undertakes a similar project.

I will just add that I found the author to be somewhat of a mumbly audiobook narrator, but having the author as a narrator certainly helped with the emotional engagement since her passion shines through her narration.

This is a wonderful book

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I found the title interesting, but the contents far exceeded my expectations! Now I have a whole new list of authors and novels to explore. Thank you!

Thoughtful, illuminating, very enjoyable

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