In Conversation with Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf
by Kelsey Scouten Bates, John C. Haas Director
Thanks to rare book dealer Rebecca Romney, I am more than halfway through Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, a book I would have never picked up if it weren’t for Rebecca’s new book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. The Mysteries of Udolpho is between 550-750 pages long, depending on the edition, and I am listening to it, so that translates into 26 hours and 25 minutes. At this point, I’m committed. But I am being swept along by Radcliffe’s storytelling and gothic themes, which makes these pages breeze by.
The fact is, authors like Ann Radcliffe are much less read and talked about today even as Jane Austen remains perennially popular. Rebecca’s new book helps us to understand why, and it’s for reasons more complicated than you might think (it’s not because Ann Radcliffe’s writing is “bad,” as subjective as that may be). The actual lives of these writers are fascinating if not gripping, and I left Rebecca’s book craving the stories these women wrote.
Enjoy my interview with Rebecca below, and find her as a guest on the Rosenbach’s Sherlock Monthly on June 21!
KSB: Your idea for this book grew out of your realization that you had a gap in your knowledge about a group of female writers who inspired one of the greatest writers in English, Jane Austen (and you have certainly shined a light on my own knowledge gaps!). I think what holds people back, especially women, is the fear of publicly admitting they don’t know something, and it turns into “imposter syndrome.” Was that a hard thing to get over? Did you want to stop and say: wait a minute, I could lose credibility if I make this admission?
RR: Authority and experience are the bedrock of a rare book dealer’s reputation so, yes, I wondered if admitting this gap would do myself a disservice in a professional sense. But I decided I would rather write a book that was true than a book that made me look good.
Further, I believe we create the conditions to learn faster and more effectively when we allow ourselves to admit, without shame, that we don’t know everything. No one can know everything. When people remark upon my rare book knowledge, they often say something hyperbolic like, “You know everything about rare books!” No: it’s that I know where to find that knowledge. Part of what I wanted to show in Jane Austen’s Bookshelf is the process behind finding.
KSB: Jane Austen's Bookshelf is an analysis of the women—their writing and their lives—that Jane Austen was reading when she was writing her perennially popular novels. It begins with your plan for building a collection of rare books written by these authors and your decision to keep to a very strict budget while collecting some important things. Your book reads as encouragement (maybe even permission?) to collect, even on a budget. As you mention in the book, if we believed everything we read or saw on tv, we would believe you have to be rich to collect rare books. But we know that is not true. In fact, is it possible that collecting books on a budget is actually *better* than having unlimited resources? How has this experience informed your personal collecting? Has it changed it at all?
RR: Most ideas about book collecting in the popular imagination are misinformed, but understandably so: when a rare book makes headlines, it’s usually something like a Shakespeare Folio selling for millions of dollars. Book collecting can look like that—I’ve sold some of the later Folios myself—but in practice, it’s much broader and more practical than many realize. I’ve witnessed this especially in my work as co-administrator of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, an annual award of $1,000 to the best book collection built by a woman in the United States aged 30 or younger. Year after year I have been struck by the book collections built by people with significant limitations—in money, space, and access. One of our winners, Emily Forster, collected fan-made comics and acquired many books via trading ones she had made herself, without spending a dime. One year’s honorable mention, Caitlin Downey, collected ephemeral dance programs that all fit into a couple shoeboxes which she could keep in her college dorm room. Another honorable mention, Ariana Valderrama, pivoted from trying to collect more expensive Toni Morrison first editions into collecting books Morrison edited after finding inspiration for that new angle on Instagram. Limitations are not a reason to despair; they are an opportunity to be creative.
KSB: What is your next collecting project going to be, if you know it yet?
RR: I must confess that I have a number of book collections. I have an extensive collection of the Ace gothic romance paperbacks of the 1960s and early ‘70s (think “women running from houses” on the cover). For that one I’ve added a limit that I won’t spend more than $15 on a single book. I’ve also been working on completing a set of the hardcover first printings for the 1980s Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers series. I began that one before the Jane Austen Bookshelf collection, but it’s been harder than anticipated to finish because these texts were meant mainly for university libraries: secondhand sellers either don’t identify the printing or they typically handle ex-library copies that I don’t want. I also have a collection of association copies of feminist science fiction writers that includes books by Ursula K. Le Guin, Judith Merril, James Tiptree Jr., Joanna Russ, and Samuel Delany. I could go on! As I say in the book, the topic you should collect is the one that you love to talk about even while the eyes of your loved ones begin to glaze over. Book collecting is an excuse to deep dive, in 3D, into your favorite topic.
KSB: With each chapter and each author, the fascinating stories of these women's lives and their writing careers unfold in a very novel-like way. Each seems to build upon the one before her so that there is almost a narrative arch to your analysis. Did you take these authors in any particular order, or did it just work out that way?
RR: The book is something of a memoir of my own journey learning about these authors and reacting to their works, so the structure largely stays faithful to how I experienced it. Frances Burney’s novel, Evelina, made me first start asking questions—so she appears first. Radcliffe was my next stop, then Charlotte Lennox, just as in the book. The narrative progression flowed naturally because this kind of thematic, long-term reading has a compounding effect, helping us make connections, see patterns, and build meaning. For instance, I’m not sure I would have explored the question of why it’s hard for women to be wits in the Lennox chapter if I hadn’t already read all about the fate of Frances Burney, who was once famous as a comic writer—but is no longer well known for that.
That said, once I had completed my initial investigation into each writer, I continued to read more of their books. By the end, the result was that I was gleefully jumping around from my fifth Charlotte Smith novel, to my third Maria Edgeworth novel, then to my sixth Elizabeth Inchbald play, and so on. This approach led to its own epiphanies, as it allowed the works to come into dialogue with each other in new ways. I tried to record both of these types of reading experiences into how I wrote the book.
KSB: Throughout your analysis you interweave relevant and personal anecdotes and reflections about being a young reader, a student, and, eventually, a collector through the lens of womanhood. As a woman, was there one writer you related to or felt closest to above the others? And, as a reader, which of their books rose to the top for you? And why?
RR: This is hard to answer! I think I most love Charlotte Lennox, author of the terrific satirical novel The Female Quixote (1752). Unlike many of the women featured in the book—including Austen herself—Lennox needed to write in order to survive, and this affected the choices she made in terms of which projects she took on. (This was also the case at least for Charlotte Smith, who first started publishing to get her profligate husband out of debtor’s prison.) But what I especially loved about Lennox was her commitment to remain herself: witty and bold. As a teen reliant upon rich patrons for support, she first came to fame for a cheeky poem called “The Art of Coquetry” (roughly: flirting). Her first novel features a heroine who defends herself from attempted assault by drawing the man’s own sword and stabbing him with it. Soon after, she became persona non grata in literary circles for daring to criticize Shakespeare in print. Even with so much at stake, she still pushed the boundaries. I love that Lennox knew the risks, but she took them anyway.
As a reader, I love both of Elizabeth Inchbald’s novels, A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796). But I have a bigger statement to make: Outside of Pride and Prejudice (which is a nearly perfect book), the novels of Maria Edgeworth match the quality of any of Jane Austen’s. Belinda (1801) and Helen (1834) are courtship novels in the same genre as Austen’s; but my personal favorites are Ennui (1809) and Harrington (1817).
KSB: I remember the first time I went to the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. I couldn’t believe there were that many antiquarian book dealers left in the world! Do you find most people are mystified by your profession and surprised still exists? And, the book trade is better with more women booksellers in it, so, how can we get more women into the rare book trade?
RR: As an antiquarian book dealer, I am always ready for a dinner party: as soon as people hear what I do, they have a million questions. To be fair, before I stumbled into my first job in the rare book trade, I didn’t know the job I have now even existed. It is a small world, but it is rich and weird and lovely, and I would love to invite more people in.
As for getting more women in the rare book trade, there have always been many women in this profession—but historically, for a variety of reasons, their names have not often been the ones on the company letterhead. Yet I find cause for optimism today: the trade has made great strides in recent years in recognizing and addressing some of the aspects of our culture that have exacerbated this imbalance, as in the ABAA’s Gender Equity Initiative. And I must mention CABS-Minnesota, a week-long seminar that introduces students to the antiquarian book trade. More than half of the current faculty at the Seminar are women (including myself), and typically more than half of the students are women.
KSB: You've written a couple of books, and you maintain a rare book business at the same time. On behalf of all of us who are working and writing: When do you write? What is your process?
RR: It’s not simple to make the time to write in addition to running a business full-time (in addition to responsibilities at home). But, for me, it helps that I write because I love writing itself. I write to understand what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling. When I’m writing this way—as opposed to writing towards a goal or a deadline—I look forward to it, just like I look forward to reading. So, I might write in little bits during the morning before work, or for an hour before bed, neither of which feel onerous when they come from natural desire. This is, I hope, reflected in my books: I’ve always chosen topics I want to get lost in—and find myself in.
***
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 co-founder of the Honey & 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 latest is Jane Austen's Bookshelf, about Austen's favorite women writers. 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), the Council of the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA), and the Board and faculty of the Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS-Minnesota). She is a member of the Grolier Club, the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie (AIB), the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), and the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI).
Jane Austen’s Bookshelf can be pre-ordered here.