Lecture: Rebecca Romney on Jane Austen's Bookshelf

"Jane Austen's Bookshelf: Collecting As Investigation." Club member and rare book dealer Rebecca Romney is the author of a new book, Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend (Simon & Schuster). This lecture will chronicle the germination of her Jane Austen Bookshelf collection. It began during a house call, when she acquired a Victorian edition of Frances Burney's Evelina. While cataloguing the book, Rebecca researched the life of Burney, who was one of Austen's favorite writers. Rebecca's deep dive into this volume uncovered gaps in her own reading that she didn't know she had. It became the start of a project to learn about Austen's now-underappreciated female inspirations, using book collecting as a path to discovery. Rebecca's book will be available for sale and signing at the lecture.

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