Jane Austen's Bookshelf Quotes

“What we feel when we read does not remain on the page. We take it with us. We absorb it. It doesn’t have to change us, exactly (though it can), but it does affect us. It becomes part of the accumulation of all the little moments that make up our lives. Whether you read for education, for understanding, for a challenge, for fun, for relaxation, for escape, for another reason, or any combination of these, those hours have meaning. Reading is a solitary act that nevertheless connects you to others. It sets your interiority ablaze with ideas, connections, disagreements, or pleasures. In the process, you also learn to recognize — and to value — the world inside your mind.”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf

“A work can be imperfect, so long as it moves you.”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf

“In her 1988 biography of [Frances] Burney, Margaret Anne Doody said as much: "It is as if there were a quota for female fiction writers, preferably no more than one per century or at most per half-century. We have one already in Austen, the position is filled."... The Smurfette Principle has proven especially applicable in the formation of the Western literary canon. Between women writers, you have to beat the best or you don't get to play at all.”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf

“Despite what newspaper headlines may tell you”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend

“The "best" book is not necessarily the canonical one.”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf

“. . . the critics who shaped our modern idea of the novel in English so frequently dismissed women writers that the systematic excising has a name. It’s called the Great Forgetting. Only Austen survived that period . . .”
― Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen's Bookshelf