Rare book collector Rebecca Romney holds The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, published in 1794. The novel is among the archives that inspired Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, Romney’s new book on the women writers who influenced Austen.
Valerie Plesch for NPR
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A chance encounter with Frances Burney’s 1778 novel, Evelina, sent rare book dealer Rebecca Romney on a yearslong quest to find the women writers who influenced Jane Austen’s work. One of Romney’s specialties is the history of the novel. But names like Burney’s were missing from her recollection of Austen’s reading list.
“Quickly, I realized I had read all of the men that she had read… and then I was reading about all the women that she loved, and I hadn’t read any of them—most of them I hadn’t even heard of,” Romney said. “So I thought, I need a course correction because I had this gap in my own reading knowledge.”
In Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, Romney brings overlooked voices to life, spotlighting eight women writers—including Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, and Maria Edgeworth—who shaped Austen’s literary world.
Romney’s gap in knowledge about the women Austen read soon had a name.
Versions of Evelina and Cecilia by Frances Burney are displayed in the archives at Type Punch Matrix, a rare bookshop in Silver Spring, Md.
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“I realized scholars see it this way too, because these women were so systematically excised from our understanding of the canon and the development of the novel that they gave it a name. That name is the Great Forgetting,” she said.
Romney’s version of Jane Austen’s bookshelf is assembled at her bookshop, Type Punch Matrix, in Silver Spring, Maryland. She co-founded the space with Brian Cassidy in 2019. Some of the literary treasures housed there date back to the 16th century.
On the day NPR visited Romney at the shop, the author glowed at the sight of her collection and the voices represented in it.
Rebecca Romney’s book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, is displayed at Type Punch Matrix, which houses the archives that inspired it.
Valerie Plesch for NPR
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Valerie Plesch for NPR
“Then you start seeing this interaction between the authors, which I think was so fun. It wasn’t just everything about Austen. Soon it just becomes its own constellation of writers in the 18th century, specifically how women are talking to each other as artists.”
She hopes readers experience the book and the collection as a literary altar of sorts—one with room for many stars.
Rare book collector Rebecca Romney arranges novels at Type Punch Matrix in Silver Spring, Md.
Valerie Plesch for NPR
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“What I’m trying to do is not only get a sense of what their accomplishments were as writers but also to give them their due, the due that has been taken from them over the hundreds of years in which their reputations have slowly trickled away.”
The digital version of this story was produced and edited for the web by Majd Al-Waheidi.