I didn’t expect my “to be read” list to increase so much after reading just one Jane Austen Society-approved book.
I retired early, and one of the unexpected gifts of that decision is that I read more now. A lot more. Reading is such a joy. It lets me simultaneously learn, relax, think, and share (when the book is outstanding). It’s one of the best parts of my days. I generally read non-fiction, but my all-time favorite book is Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it, but that number is probably pushing 20.
When my JASNA book club (the Jane Austen Society of North America) chose Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney as our next read, I picked it up without particularly high expectations. The last speaker I’d heard talk about Jane Austen nearly put me to sleep. This book is about the authors who influenced Jane Austen. It’s a memoir-ish blend of rare book dealing and literary history. It sounded pleasant. Niche. Maybe a little dry.
I was completely wrong. This book is so good.
Romney’s book is incredibly well-written and eye-opening. Somewhere between her descriptions of the fascinating world of rare book dealing and her excavation of the lives and hardships of famous female authors of the 1700s and 1800s, I realized something important: we have let men curate so much more than just our decisions about what to read.
I quickly gave this book five stars. Here’s why you might like to read it too.
The World of Rare Books Is More Fascinating Than You Think
Before the literary history even begins, Romney draws you into her world as a rare book dealer, and it is a world I had no idea I wanted to inhabit. From the detective work of authenticating a first edition to the physical intimacy of handling and tracking books that are centuries old. And ultimately, the thrill of finding something significant where nobody expected it. Romney writes about rare books the way food writers write about great meals, with a sensory richness that makes you want to start collecting books (even if you are somewhat of a minimalist and know that’s a bad idea).
I didn’t expect this to be one of my favorite parts of the book. It was. If you have even a passing interest in books as objects that have survived the same centuries as the ideas they carry, Romney will impress and intrigue you.
“There Can Only Be One”: The Erasure of Women Writers
The central literary argument of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf is one that made me angry, and Romney makes it with quiet, well-documented precision: the female authors who preceded and influenced Jane Austen were pushed into obscurity, at least in part, by a cultural assumption that there could only be one great female writer at a time.
Frances Burney, whose 1782 novel Cecilia gave Austen the phrase “pride and prejudice”, was brilliant, groundbreaking, and enormously influential. Her novel Evelina features the kind of complex inner psychological life in a female protagonist that was new in English fiction. And yet Burney spent much of her later career suffering from comparison to Austen, as though two women couldn’t both be great.
I am currently reading Evelina because of Romney’s book, and I want to be very clear: I am enjoying it as much as any Austen novel I have read. It is funny, sharp, and completely absorbing. The fact that most people have never heard of it is not a reflection of its quality. It is a reflection of society at large, and the way it treated women and their work.
Romney introduces us to Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. All of them are remarkable, influential and most of them are unfamiliar to modern readers. She makes the case, persuasively and without oversimplifying, that this is not an accident. Men criticized Gothic fiction relentlessly, Romney notes, sometimes specifically because women wrote it. Richard Cumberland organized theatrical attacks on women playwrights to reduce his own competition. The message was consistent: there is room for one of you. Choose wisely.
We are still living with the consequences of that curation. We still see this happening today, don’t we?
Coverture: The Legal Framework That Owned Women
If the literary erasure is infuriating, the legal context these women navigated is worse.
Under English common law, married women existed under a doctrine called coverture, from the French femme couverte, meaning “covered woman.” Through marriage, a woman’s existence was incorporated into that of her husband. She had very few recognized individual rights of her own. She could not own property, sign legal documents, or keep her own wages. Married women had no rights to wages they earned and lost control of anything they owned before marriage.
Under coverture, a married woman had the status of feme covert and was not recognized as having legal rights and obligations distinct from those of her husband. – Jane Austen’s Bookshelf
Romney quotes Elizabeth Thomas: “The man may range from his unhappy wife, / But woman’s made a property for life.”
Charlotte Smith’s story is the most visceral illustration of what this meant in practice. Her stepmother worked with her father to marry her off to Benjamin Smith at 16, who turned out to be a catastrophe of a human being: he lied, cheated, breached contracts, spent everything, beat her, and kept getting her pregnant. Smith eventually left him (a bold and difficult act in itself at the time) but because of coverture, he could periodically return and legally take her money and possessions. She had no recourse. She was, in the eyes of the law, his property.
And yet. Charlotte Smith wrote anyway. She wrote to survive financially: to feed her children and pay debts that her husband had recklessly accumulated. Emmeline (1788) was one of Austen’s favorites. The Old Manor House (1793) became her only lasting classic. It contains, incidentally, the phrase “pride and prejudice”, also predating Austen’s use of it.
She also notes that virtually all of these women’s novels were, on some level, sending the same message: the law will not protect you. Take steps to protect yourself when it comes to getting married. We’ve had discussions in our previous JASNA book clubs that the very reason Jane Austen never married may be because she was too smart to place herself under coverture.
Coverture was not substantially challenged until the late 19th century, when Married Women’s Property Acts began to be passed in various common-law jurisdictions. The Married Women’s Property Act in England passed in 1882. That is not ancient history. That is four generations ago.
I am so grateful I don’t live in the 1800s.
The Partner You Choose Determines Everything
One of the most striking contrasts in the book is the one between Charlotte Smith’s nightmare of a husband and Ann Radcliffe’s.
Radcliffe’s husband William was, as Romney puts it, “relentlessly supportive” of her writing even as she earned significantly more than he did. She bought their first home together through the proceeds of her books. He celebrated her success. He made space for her work. William did not feel threatened by a wife who was more accomplished and better compensated than he was.
The result: Radcliffe became arguably the most commercially successful novelist of the 18th century. The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) sold for 500 pounds, more than twice what any other female author had received for a book at the time. Romney believes Radcliffe may be the most influential female author in all of English literature, as she inspired both Frankenstein and Dracula.
The contrast with Smith is not subtle. Two brilliant women, writing in the same culture under the same laws. One had a partner who supported her. One had a partner who took everything she had. The difference in their lives was not talent. It was the man they married.
This is not a problem that has fully resolved itself. The partner you choose still determines a staggering amount of your life’s trajectory: your freedom, your time, your ability to do the work that matters to you. Romney doesn’t belabor this point, but it’s impossible to read these profiles side by side and not feel it.
I Loved Romney’s Feminist Zingers
One of the things I love most about this book is that Romney is funny and sassy about things that deserve to be called out, particularly from a feminist perspective.
On the cultural panic about novels corrupting young women with romantic notions of overly-chivalrous men: “Yes, what an awful shame that would be: women refusing to settle because novels depicted men of higher standards.”
To the doctor who claimed that women who used their brains too much would become infertile, it’s worth cracking open the book. Suffice it to say, she notes it with exactly the tone it deserves.
Romney is not so much hitting us over the head with feminism. The feminist observations are not imposed on the history. They emerge from it and she simply comments on the ridiculousness as it goes by, to a hilarious effect.
Read This Book
I came to Jane Austen’s Bookshelf expecting to read one book, and learn a bit about the history that shaped Jane Austen and her work. I left it with a reading list, a deeper understanding of the world that produced Austen, and some fire directed at the men who created an era that oppressed instead of supported great female authors.
I’ve already started Evelina. I have Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho sitting on my end table.
That is the best possible review I can give a book: it sent me looking for more.
I appreciate your book, Rebecca Romney. Well done.
Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney is available wherever books are sold. I read it as part of my JASNA book club. If you’re a Jane Austen enthusiast and not yet a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, it’s worth looking into. And if you want to read more of about what I’m doing in retirement, this post is a good place to start.
