In the original dust jacket. Cream cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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‘Everything a reader could desire: wit, passion, mystery, brilliant detective work, a love of rare books, a deep dive into literary history and, best of all, the restoration of reputation for a group of great women authors whose names should never have been forgotten’ Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Publishing to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.

It all started with a book that made me curious.

When rare books dealer Rebecca Romney found an emerald clothbound edition of Evelina by Frances Burney, she was happy to discover that she’d stumbled across a novel by one of Jane Austen’s favourite authors. Inspired by the connection between the two writers, she returned to Austen’s books with a new lens, picking out clues sprinkled throughout her works that pointed to the writers she had admired.

Austen read William Shakespeare, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson, all authors Rebecca had read. But Austen also read Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth, all authors Romney hadn’t. These female writers all sat proudly on Austen’s bookshelf, but have disappeared from ours.

Romney became fascinated with these writers and wanted to answer three important questions: What were the stories behind the lives of these women? Why have they disappeared from our bookshelves? Who wrote them out of history? She had a mission, an obligation: she needed to collect Jane Austen’s bookshelf.

Reviews:

• What a joy to find all of the women whose lives I have been researching in a single volume! The author’s insights of her life as a rate books dealer and collector added depth to what I already knew about the women writers who came before Jane Austen.
• Rebecca Romney’s book was a real eye opener for me. I have been a “Janeite” ever since I studied “Pride and Prejudice” in my teens. Slowly, I read all her 6 “great novels” many times. More recently. I read her Life by Park Honan (cited by Romney) and also by Claire Tomalin. Ms. Romney’s book explains how much Austen learned from her predecessors and who they were. I can imagine how a Mozart lover would find that his greatness does not exist in a vacuum but among the other towering peaks like J S Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert,.. Ms Romney says it is relatively easy to read the books of Austen’s contemporaries but does not explain where one can get hold of them (free!) on the Internet. Romney will be thanked by all Austen fans for her illuminating and valuable discussions of women who inspired Jane Austen to achieve her immortal greatness. N.B. I am not an English Literature specialist or Historian but a humble Physicist.

Rebecca Romney is a generalist rare book dealer, handling works in all fields, from first editions of Jane Austen to science fiction paperbacks. Romney is the author of Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History (with JP Romney) and The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books, 1769­-1999. Her work as a bookseller or writer has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, Variety, The Paris Review, and more. In 2019, she was featured in the documentary on the rare book trade, The Booksellers.