Jane Austen's Bookshelf
by rebecca romney
Jess’s Pick
This has been sitting on my shelf for months and realized it came out today so I had to stop everything to read it and I’m soooo glad I did. It truly awakened many niche interests, some that I forgot I even had: bookselling (not forgotten), Jane Austen (not forgotten), history of the book (forgotten since college). I wrote a paper about the history of the 1816 Philadelphia edition of EMMA back in sophomore year, and I remember having the best time searching the history of a singular book and the materiality, the process of it all. Reading Rebecca Romney in conversation with scholars I researched (Ian Watt, Juliette Wells etc) brought me back to when I genuinely enjoyed learning which is a rare thing to happen outside of college for me.
Outside of the pull from my interests, Romney is just a fabulous non fiction writer and I was never bored reading about regency era writers. She encapsulated how Austen’s women influences got dropped from the cannon so well, and didn’t just prop it up to “oh it was just sexism.” Yes, that’s inherently true, but Romney brought such a nuanced approach to the topic of how generations tastes can be shaped by just a few people’s insults of a writer at the right time. She also wrote about this in such a modern way that made it palpable for me, which was much needed after brushing off the dust of my university style reading. I found myself even laughing at one off comments made and annotated in my own chaotic sticky notes.
As a former bookseller, this was so interesting to see the side of rare bookselling I have very little knowledge of and how it takes such a different skill set than being an indie bookseller. But I was also able to relate on so many levels about bookselling, specifically when Romney went into the unique experience of “learning how to talk with authority about books you haven’t read, either because you’ve read a lot about those books, or because you can place that book in a wider historical context that you do know well.” I could not have put that into words more clearer!! I am now going to read all of the women writers’ who shaped Jane Austen (I probably won’t).
