Why read Jane Austen's Bookshelf?

Book cover of Jane Austen's Bookshelf

Book description

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure featuring “your favorite author's favorite authors” (Today)—the women who inspired Jane Austen—that's “a meditation on reading and writing, on honesty and self-discovery—and on what books can teach us, if we let them” (The…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Jane Austen's Bookshelf as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Esther M. Sternberg

Author

I loved this book because it changed my view of Jane Austen as the first female novelist. I love Jane Austen, but never knew how much previous women authors inspired her. Like many creative geniuses, she took the inspiration to the next level, and perhaps that is why we have forgotten those who preceded her. I loved the structure of this book, written like a detective story, where the author finds references throughout Austen's works, some subtle, to the women authors and the characters they wrote, whom she admired - or didn't! From there the author, an antiquarian bookseller, tracked…

From Esther's 3 favorite reads in 2025.