We tend to think of Jane Austen as the first great female novelist, whose originality paved the way for creative descendants to dazzle critics and readers. “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” contends that virtually every part of that sentence is wrong.

Rebecca Romney, the author and occasional “Pawn Stars” guest who wrote “Bookshelf,” is a fan of Austen. But her point in the book, subtitled “A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend,” is that Austen didn’t spring out of the grassy fields of the English countryside as a fully formed bestseller machine. There are clues throughout her work that she read widely, not only enjoying many female novelists who preceded her but often name-checking them in her work and sometimes borrowing plots and character ideas.

“Bookshelf” does quite a few things at once and it mostly works. There are hints of memoir as Romney describes her life as a collector and dealer (which is what gets her on “Pawn Stars”). She shares a bit about hunting down rare titles and about why books are so important to her that she sometimes hoards key finds for herself, rather than adding them to the inventory of her own business. She’s a good storyteller, with a sharp instinct for the kinds of things that might interest the average bibliophile.

There also are mini-biographies of eight female writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. In some cases, they are writers we know Austen enjoyed, because she wrote about them in letters to her sister. In others, they are writers Romney suspects Austen would have read because their work was found in lending libraries the novelist frequented or was admired by people whose opinions Austen valued.

Fortunately, those eight women are compelling characters who were way ahead of their time. That’s true in terms of negotiating with publishers, in an era when the work of women usually appeared anonymously (as Austen’s did) or under a male pseudonym, and in living their lives. Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, for instance, refused to obey conventions with regard to work or romance — her second marriage was to her kids’ music teacher, who was foreign, “lower class” and probably a smoke show.

In a development that will likely surprise no woman who has ever accomplished anything, Romney writes that Piozzi fell victim to a phenomenon that continues today. Much of the credit for her work was given to a man, specifically Samuel Johnson (who knew several of the women in the book, both championing and taking credit for their work): “Even when Johnson had nothing to do with a book, many of the descriptions tended to make Piozzi’s published works about him anyway.”

Jane Austen's Bookshelf (Marysue Rucci Books)

Readers who don’t find it delightful when Austen characters vent about having to dress up last year’s ballgown with this year’s ribbons probably won’t care much about “Bookshelf.” But Romney’s chatty, justifiably miffed book is a treasure chest for Austen fans, for whom comments like this, about writer Elizabeth Inchbald, will be as welcome as a jar of clotted cream at tea: “What I found was a writer who constantly elicited that rare reaction in readers: I kept laughing aloud at her genuinely funny jokes.”

Romney doesn’t gild the lily. She admits that a few of these 18th-century writers have not stood the test of time (she couldn’t get past the first couple chapters of one book). Which makes “Bookshelf” even more valuable for those who cherish Austen’s six novels and wish there were more to enjoy.

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf

By: Rebecca Romney.

Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books, 454 pages, $29.99.