
Rebecca Romney (Printer's Error) does some riveting detective work in Jane Austen's Bookshelf, an investigation into the women writers who made an impact on Austen--and why readers know so few of them. Along the way, she asks who gets to decide the canon, how does it evolve over time, and are readers themselves complicit?
Romney is not only an expert antiquarian book dealer and a passionate and knowledgeable reader, but also a marvelous writer. Her journey begins with one book, Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney, discovered on a "house call" to a collector like herself. Another title by Burney, Cecilia, appears in a passage from Northanger Abbey, a favorite book that Romney has reread a number of times. So why hadn't Romney read Burney, or Ann Radcliffe, or Maria Edgeworth, all of whom are mentioned in that same passage? That passage gives Romney the outline for a new collection: Jane Austen's Bookshelf.
Assembling this collection's criteria (e.g., Austen's favorite women writers; which books and editions; condition; etc.), she notes, "A reader falls in love with the story in the book. A collector falls in love with the story of the book." From there, Romney offers brief bios of Austen and the eight women writers who influenced her enough to earn a place in it. Those paint a larger picture of women in the 18th and early 19th centuries: Hannah More could afford to write due to a broken engagement that resulted in "a structured annual payment"; Charlotte Smith wrote in order to free her gambler husband from debtors' prison. Such concrete examples emphasize Romney's point about the importance of women's agency in "courtship novels" or the romance genre, as it's called today: "If you look more closely, questions of love and marriage have historically been central to the fate of women's lives, legally and economically."
In the course of her quest, Romney considers the evolution of language (the word "romance" once referred to anything that was not nonfiction, and is still evident in the French and German words "roman" and the Italian "romanzo," which translate as "novel"), as well as many of Austen's Bookshelf authors' ties to Samuel Johnson and David Garrick, prominent tastemakers in their era, and their impact on the canon. She also offers diverting meditations on whether "first editions" truly are best (e.g., Darwin's Origin of the Species, which does not include "survival of the fittest" until the fifth edition); and even how to remove a sticker from a paperback. With humor and candor, Romney gives readers much to ponder about a favorite author and why her books are of such importance today. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: In book collector Rebecca Romney's marvelous memoir, she uncovers eight women authors who influenced Jane Austen and explores why they disappeared from the literary canon.