Name: Jane Austen’s Bookshelf
Start: 2025-05-16T17:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-05-16T18:30:00-04:00
Location: John Carter Brown Library

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

The Providence Athenaeum enriches the mind, inspires the spirit, and elevates public discourse.As an independent, member-supported library and cultural center located on Providence’s historic Benefit Street, the library has welcomed illustrious writers, spirited thinkers, and intellectual community members through its doorsover its nearly 200 years of existenceto engage in reading, conversation, and debate.

Providence Athenæum

Rare book dealer Rebecca Romney unearths the books that shaped Jane Austen

John Carter Brown Library

Please note this program will be hosted at the John Carter Brown Library at 94 George Street, Providence, RI. You can register for the virtual simulcast <a href="https://brown.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pzcBUVvxQM2zwzLi_nZc2w" title="https://brown.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pzcBUVvxQM2zwzLi_nZc2w" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more.But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen’s bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn’t Romney—despite her training—ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon?Jane Austen’s Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes—women writers who were erased from the Western canon—to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen’s bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.Presented in partnership with the <a href="https://jcblibrary.org/" title="https://jcblibrary.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">John Carter Brown Library</a>.Book sale, signing, and reception to follow. Thank you to the evening's bookseller, <a href="https://symposiumbooks.com/" title="https://symposiumbooks.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Symposium Books</a>!-Rebecca Romney is a rare book dealer and the cofounder of Type Punch Matrix, a rare book company based in Washington, DC. She is the rare books specialist on the HISTORY Channel’s show Pawn Stars, and the cofounder of the Honey &amp; Wax Book Collecting Prize. She is a generalist rare book dealer, handling works in all fields, from first editions of Jane Austen to science fiction paperbacks. Romney is the author of Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History (with JP Romney) and The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books, 1769­–1999. Her work as a bookseller or writer has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Forbes, Variety, The Paris Review, and more. In 2019, she was featured in the documentary on the rare book trade, The Booksellers. She is on the Board of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) and the faculty of the Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS-Minnesota).

The Athenæum's Spring 2025 Season is generously sponsored by the following friends and partners:

Agenda

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Book sale, signing, & reception

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Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

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Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

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