Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney, And More: The Lesser-Known Women Authors Jane Austen Loved

Additional comment provided by Rebecca Romney, a rare books specialist and co-founder of Type Punch Matrix and author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about why Jane Austen (and Brontë) fans should give Elizabeth Gaskell a read. 

But Gaskell was seven when the Pride and Prejudice writer died. What about the authors Austen herself grew up reading? 

We know that she enjoyed William Shakespeare, John Milton, and Samuel Richardson.

However, Rebecca Romney, author of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, said that women authors – some of whom aren’t as well-known as the likes of the Bard – made a significant impression on the author, and are still worth reading today.

Which women authors did Austen love? 

Romney told us that her favourite women authors were likely Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth.

“We can say this with some degree of confidence because of the famous passage in Northanger Abbey in which Austen defends reading novels,” she told HuffPost UK. 

“In that passage, she specifically names Burney’s novels Cecilia and Camilla, as well as Edgeworth’s novel Belinda, as works in which ‘the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.’” 

As for the lesser-known writers she liked are novelist and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald, “whose comedy Lovers’ Vows becomes a major plot point in Mansfield Park,” and Charlotte Smith, “one of the most popular novelists of the 1790s, about whom Austen’s characters speak effusively in her teenage novella Catharine, or the Bower”. 

Did they affect Jane Austen’s writing? 

Romney said that once you’ve read these authors, “you begin to see the similarities everywhere!”

For instance, “Frances Burney’s first novel Evelina features tropes and scenes that Austen turned to her own purposes in Pride and Prejudice.

“In Persuasion, Austen elaborates upon themes from the Charlotte Smith novels she read as a teenager, in which not simply true love but the timing of formalising that love plays a critical role in achieving a happy ending.”

And Emma, the “false suitor” sub-plot reminded Romney of  Maria Edgeworth’s novel Patronage, which was published the year before, in 1814.

“Austen also learned from their style, including the comic vignettes of Burney, the weighted gestures of Inchbald, and the skilful free indirect discourse of Edgeworth.” 

Which lesser-known authors should I read next if I loved Jane Austen? 

Romney’s personal favourite is Maria Edgeworth. 

“Outside of Pride and Prejudice (which is essentially a perfect book), I would place many of Edgeworth’s novels peer-to-peer with Austen’s: Belinda, Ennui, Harrington, and Helen all hold up and are fantastic reads today,” she told us.

But she also loved said that Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho, which Catherine Moreland loved in Northanger Abbey, “was one of the most thrilling reading experiences I’ve had in the past decade”.

Lastly, “Elizabeth Inchbald’s comedic timing in the dialogue of her novel A Simple Story (1791) had me laughing out loud. I had to resist the impulse to live-post her mic-drop lines of repartee on social media while reading it.”