Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship's Reviews > Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

4.5 stars

I ate this book up, both because it provides a fascinating look into the lives of popular women writers in the 18th century, and for the commentary on their books. For years I have been looking for a critical book about what becomes a classic and what doesn’t: tracing the careers of books through the centuries, seeing where their reputations are boosted or where they are dropped from the canon, loudly or quietly. So I was especially excited about this part, and although the portions on rare book dealing and collecting interested me less, it was still a peek into a world I knew nothing about.

In general the nine authors profiled had fascinating lives, and I’m now interested in giving many of their works a shot as well. I do suspect Romney of being a very generous reader, quite understandably since she came to these works with both low expectations and the desire to be pleased; she only disliked one writer (whom Austen probably did too), and otherwise thinks they were unfairly dropped from the canon. Of course, what is great is ultimately subjective, and if Jane Austen thought these writers were great—the amount of evidence varies, but most of them she clearly did think were great—that’s a strong recommendation.

It’s interesting that Romney points to male writers from the period, such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne, having fared far better than the women. I wonder how much of that is specific to academia, as this does not seem to be borne out on Goodreads (at least when compared to the more popular of the women, such as Burney and Radcliffe). Also, all 18th century British writers—even Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe blows the others out of the water in number of ratings—get mediocre averages. Does this support the conventional wisdom that 18th century novels just don’t hold up well today, while Austen was a genius pioneering the modern novel? But how to separate the authors’ relative merits from their cultural standing, when nobody comes to Austen blind? The question of how the canon should be defined is perhaps a riddle with no answer. But a major takeaway from this book is that it is not an automatic process, but one highly dependent on the tastes of influential readers. And once a book is dropped from the canon, however specious the reasons, it’s hard to bring back—pre-internet, almost impossible, because going out of print meant few people could read it even if they wanted to!

At any rate, some notes on the authors discussed:

Jane Austen: During her time, she was considered more “among the best in her genre” than “grand master.” Her reputation grew after her death, however, with some key interventions mostly by influential men: in 1870, when interest was beginning to wane, her nephew published an important memoir of her; he and her brother both skillfully portrayed her as the perfect Victorian angel. Other male professors and critics also championed her books, then leading to many adaptations, all of which has kept her work in the canon and the public eye.

Frances Burney: Was both wildly popular and renowned in her time, and one of the authors Austen most looked up to. She seems to have fallen out of the canon in part because her work was deemed too similar to Austen’s by male taste-makers with limited interest in young women’s lives, and who were happy with just one token woman on the list. Romney makes good points about not pitting female authors against each other in this sort of zero-sum game; she ranks Burney’s Evelina below Pride and Prejudice but above some of Austen’s other work, and notes that while her writing was less subtle than Austen’s, she was more willing to confront unsavory aspects of life.

Romney also theorizes that infantilizing Burney by calling her “Fanny” (when she did not use her nickname professionally) didn’t help, and that growing interest in her as a diarist didn’t either, though the latter confuses me, as it still raises her profile. Personally, I suspect the sheer length of Burney’s books (her shortest are about on par with Austen’s longest) is a factor, along with their epistolary format.

Ann Radcliffe: Popularizer of gothics, also both wildly popular and critically acclaimed in her own day. Her work seems to have suffered for a couple of reasons: first because it had a slew of lower-quality imitators, and while her contemporaries held her clearly above them, later on they got lumped together, while the gothic genre (popular with women) lost prestige. Radcliffe’s personal low profile didn’t help: around the time Austen’s nephew wrote his memoir, Christina Rossetti set out to write a biography of Radcliffe, but couldn’t find material.

Romney also loved The Mysteries of Udolpho and defends it hard, in ways I didn’t entirely buy. The connection of the 18th century heroine’s constant fainting with her lacking the option to say “no” is an interesting one. But a protagonist regularly losing consciousness in dramatic moments remains a pulpy trope, and I do think genre work ages more quickly in general (hence, the pacing being difficult for modern readers). But Romney’s point about Radcliffe having far more influence on later genre writers than she’s given credit for is still an important one.

Charlotte Lennox: This woman had a bold and wild life: arriving alone in England as a teenager and immediately getting aristocratic patronage as a poet was just the beginning. It’s less clear why her work fell out of fashion: perhaps because daring to critique Shakespeare lost her a lot of fans, or maybe because she tried her hand at many things rather than having a clear “brand.” But I’m interested in trying The Female Quixote.

Hannah More: Mostly a moralist and philanthropist. While she wrote a highly moralizing novel that was popular at the time, Jane Austen probably didn’t like it and Romney didn’t either, mostly using this chapter to draw an interesting comparison between the mores of 18th century evangelicals and those of the Mormon community Romney herself grew up in. More did manage to get set up for life by suing a guy for wasting her best years in an engagement and then failing to marry her, which sounds like a good deal to me.

Charlotte Turner Smith: This chapter is mostly focused on the author’s life, which is well-deserved: she had to write her way to independence from a terrible marriage. From the sound of it her novels were geared more at money-making than literary quality (and making them as long as possible meant more money). In a literary sense she was a bigger deal as a poet, but her work was later forgotten.

Elizabeth Inchbald: Primarily a playwright, who wrote the play performed in Mansfield Park. Romney found her humor to hold up very well, her tendency to hammer home the morals less so.

Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi: The only nonfiction writer on the list. Her life is an interesting one, and her friendship with Samuel Johnson plus male contemporaries’ obsession with how terrible it was for her to marry a lower-class, Italian man after her first husband’s death seems to overshadow all other facts about her in many accounts. All this tended to preclude serious consideration of her work.

Maria Edgeworth: This section disappointed me a bit compared to the others, since Edgeworth is a big deal and one of the authors I knew of. She seems to have fallen out of the canon after getting pigeonholed as an “Irish” writer, thus being less “universal” (which is of course ridiculous and really a matter of privilege: Austen, after all, is extremely English).

At any rate, the book was a fascinating read and I do plan to check out several of the writers on this list. I am not sure I will like them as much as Romney did, but as she points out, sometimes it’s important to judge for yourself rather than allowing the critic of 100 years ago to make it for you. And this is especially true with female writers, whose work has often been dismissed—in many of these cases, even after being renowned for decades, or even a century. But I loved reading about these writers and their work, appreciate Romney’s highlighting of them, and would love to read more books like this!