By chance, Romney, a rare-books collector, comes upon a 1778 novel by a woman who turns out to have been one of Jane Austen’s favorite authors. Suddenly it occurs to Romney that perhaps her ...

Jane Austen's Bookshelf is on bookshelves now ... What happened to me is I'm a professional in rare books, and so I sell first editions of important English novels. I sell Robinson Crusoe by ...

In “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf,” however ... Although Ms. Romney had been taught—and many rare-book catalogs repeated—the claim that Austen was “the first great woman writer in English ...

“Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” contends that virtually ... But her point in the book, subtitled “A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend,” is that ...

An American rare-book dealer, Rebecca Romney, has managed it, by searching where Austen’s secrets lie hidden in plain sight: her letters and books. “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” surveys the ...