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

Rare-books dealer (and obviously also a die-hard Jane Austen fan) Rebecca Romney, she with her February 2025 monograph Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend offers a riveting, enlighteningly fun and for me also totally wonderful textual exploration of the largely forgotten women whose works influenced Jane Austen and her own oeuvre (but boy, oh boy, will my to read list be hugely extended since I am definitely planning on reading ALL of the authors mentioned in Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend).

And indeed, with each chapter of Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend showcasing a different author (Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth), for me, what Romney provides with and throughout Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, this has not just been an interesting reading experience in and of itself, no, I am now (and as already briefly alluded to above) planning to peruse all of the authors Rebecca Romney is presenting and then bien sûr also rereading Jane Austen to check and to verify how the eight featured women authors influenced and shaped Austen's writing. For yes, Romney's text for Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend shows that their influence can be seen and can be felt throughout Austen’s works (and which indeed I do know to be the case for the authors with whom I am familiar, as especially for Fanny Burney and Ann Radcliffe, I have always been aware of and intrigued by just how much they seem to have and very much lastingly so influenced Jane Austen's penmanship).

And yes, yes, yes, four solid stars for Rebecca Romney' so enthusiastically conveying through Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend her literary admiration for and her appreciation of these overlooked (and often even downright denigrated) authors, as she, as Romney describes her journey to learn more about Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth absolutely delightfully, engagingly and relatably, but indeed, I am equally and very gladly upping said four to five stars. For Romney sharing in Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend her personal experiences tracking down the works of Burney, Radcliffe, Lennox, Smith, More, Inchbald, Lynch Thrale Piozzi and Edgeworth, read their novels, sought out rare editions and always found numerous connections between their writings and Austen’s oeuvre, this has not only been a marvellous reading experience in and of itself, this has also now kind of inspired me to consider doing something similar, taking some of my favourite German language women authors of the 19th and especially of the 20th century, researching and finding out which prior and/or contemporary women (both German and non German) inspired and influenced their works, their writing styles, their thematics etc.