Rebecca Romney
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rebeccaromney.com
Rebecca Romney
@rebeccaromney.com
4.4K followers 190 following 220 posts
Your bookish enabler. Rare book dealer, Type Punch Matrix. Author, JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF. Co-founder of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. Pawn Stars, The Booksellers doc.
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This Thursday 4/24 come to Philadelphia to hear @book-historia.bsky.social and I geek out about book collecting and discuss my new book, JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF. Register here: libwww.freelibrary.org/programs/aut...
Press image for Author Events Presents, April 24th at 7:00pm, Rebecca Romney in conversation with Allie Alvis, in person at thr Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia, with headshots of both people and an image of the front cover of JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF
April 23, 2025 at 11:51 AM
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When is the last time we talked about the stunning jacket design for the 1946 first edition of Ann Petry’s THE STREET? Let’s talk about it more. I wish I knew the artist.
Front cover of the Street with an orange ombré effect and a portrait of the main character in the top left corner, half on the front and half on the spine Side view of The Street jacket showing the full view of the portrait of the main character across the spine and front panel
March 13, 2025 at 8:52 PM
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Now on its way to a special collections library: these Meiji era (1886) educational cards introducing Japanese students to major figures of Western history and literature, based on the classic Iroha Karuta matching game.

Among those included: Newton, Homer, George Washington, Cleopatra, & Moses.
Selection of cards laid out, including Thomas Becket, Patrick Henry, Lafayette, Caesar, and Peter the Great Selection of cards laid out, with Elizabeth I, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin visible
March 12, 2025 at 8:48 PM
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My surprised/grateful/joyous/exhausted face as I learned during a 2-hour flight delay that Emma Straub recommended my book this morning on the TODAY Show:
Selfie at the airport, with me, happy tired, looking incredulously at the camera
March 6, 2025 at 7:15 PM
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So gratified to see @theguardian.com review JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF: an unforgettable phrase, “canon jujitsu”!

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
Excerpt screenshot from the Guardian review: “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf is brilliant stuff - a bold bit of canon jujitsu, sparked by the simplest of questions, leading to the most enraging of conclusions, but driven by the sheer pleasure that anyone who has ever read Burney’s Evelina can attest to.”
March 3, 2025 at 9:46 PM
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If you’re in London, the delightful Heywood Hill has signed copies of my book available:
Image of JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF with a band around it including the Heywood Hill logo and “signed copy”
February 28, 2025 at 9:00 PM
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It’s finally publication day for JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF — so excited for readers to learn about Austen’s favorite authors!

bookshop.org/p/books/jane...

Audiobook: www.simonandschuster.biz/books/Jane-A...
Holding up a copy of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf in McNally Jackson with other “new and noteworthy nonfiction” in the background
February 18, 2025 at 7:51 PM
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Fascinating that being an antiquarian book dealer is a factor to be elided when talking about the romance rare book collection I sold to the Lilly!
Screenshot from an article about the Lilly Library Romance exhibition that describes me as “an author, scholar, and book historian” A screenshot of the Lilly Library Romance exhibition website describing me instead (and more accurately) as an “author, scholar, and antiquarian bookseller”
February 13, 2025 at 5:31 PM
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Our upcoming print catalogue at the shop includes a rare 18th-century book on insects — so we are leaning into that for the cover design 🪲
Front cover draft of the catalogue, which says Type Punch Matrix, and features alternating horizontal stripes of beetles and people progressing across the page
February 12, 2025 at 2:42 AM
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Another addition to my Jane Austen Bookshelf collection: this 1903 edition of Frances Burney’s EVELINA. My book is finished but I can’t stop collecting 😭
Photo of a bookshelf of books by and about Burney, holding in front of it two small blue cloth volumes, spine out, showing the title and author: Evelina by Frances Burney
February 10, 2025 at 12:31 AM
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Me, out loud to an empty room, reading a Quaritch catalogue: “Those fish sure are beautiful.”
Double page spread of woodcuts of fish in lovely scaly detail, from a 1553 “compendium of Bavarian law”
February 5, 2025 at 3:47 PM
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Counting 238 individual copperplate engravings is much more pleasant when they look like this.

From the 1776-1783 German edition of Charles de Geer’s magnum opus, ABHANDLUNGDEN ZUR GESCHICHTE DER INSEKTEN [Treatise on the History of Insects]
Copperplate engraving with seven figures of various types of dragonflies
January 31, 2025 at 3:57 PM
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A long day already, so I’m soothing myself by changing early into pajamas and popping into to see what Emily Dickinson was doing day to day
Title page of The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson by Jay Leyda Detail of 5 Dec 1873 entry, Amherst: "today, or as a memorial to this day (following Higginson's visit?), ED composes and copies two poems and dates them Dec. 5: "a wind that rose though not a leaf in any forest stirred, but with itself did cold engage beyond the realm of bird – a wind that woke a lone delight like Separation's Swell"
January 28, 2025 at 9:48 PM
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This in response to a video I posted about narrating the audiobook for my upcoming JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF. I’m not looking to shame this person, I just remain baffled this still happens anytime we talk about audiobooks.
Screenshot with comment that says: “Listening to an author read their work has value, but can we not call it reading, you’re reading. I am not.” Screenshot includes my response: “I can’t agree. Reading a book via listening to someone else read is a practice millennia old and has always been considered reading. Jane Austen herself read this way and called it reading.”
January 20, 2025 at 4:55 PM
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Jacket flaps describing the plot:
Front flap text beginning “Witch!” Rear flap with text like “they came, they saw, they succumbed.”
January 10, 2025 at 5:50 PM
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Dark Magic, 1956, Vixen Press
Front cover of Dark Magic showing a woman at a central altar holding a skull. She’s in a semi transparent fishnet deal with flames behind her
January 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
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Gustave Doré’s 1870s illustrated edition of the Bible goes so hard.
“The Vision of Death” illustration by Doré
January 10, 2025 at 12:16 AM
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To me the definition of a collection isn’t about quality per se but about mindful acquisition within parameters. So a tattered paperback might have every right to be in a collection as a HC 1st, as long as it fits your intentional parameters. See eg my Austen collection:
Shelf of books from my Austen collection with tattered paperbacks next to HC 1sts!
January 6, 2025 at 8:18 PM
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Who’s an adorable little whale? You are!

[From a ca. 1830 chapbook: A Short History of Birds and Beasts]
Handcolored woodcut of a whale, clean but simplistic, making the whale look more like a sardine
December 20, 2024 at 4:35 PM
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Absolutely no shade to the dealer but this catalogue description is a lovely example of how the rare book trade can often feel like a parody of itself
Screenshot of description for “Peck, W D. Natural history of the slug worm.” “An exceptional paper in early American natural history.” Priced at $375
December 16, 2024 at 3:13 PM
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COVER REVEAL!

A riff on the fabulous US cover designed by Chris Allen. The UK edition of my upcoming book JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF (Feb 2025) is now available for preorder via Ithaka Press / Bonnier:

geni.us/JaneAustensB...
Front cover of JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF showing portraits of Burney and Inchbald among book spines
December 12, 2024 at 5:46 PM
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Yet another unintentionally creepy vintage children’s book (1916)
Front cover of a book titled Told by the Sandman with a hooded figure cradling a baby close
December 2, 2024 at 6:03 PM
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The endpapers are even creepier!
Endpapers of the marionettes book showing various puppets with especially creepy eyes, some of which are Xes
November 27, 2024 at 4:16 PM
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Today in stellar titles of vintage books (1948):
Front cover of Marionettes are People by Edith Thane, 1948
November 27, 2024 at 1:56 PM
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Why.
Front cover of a book titled AS THE BEE SUCKS
November 25, 2024 at 8:21 PM