A few years ago, rare-book dealer Rebecca Romney bought a gorgeous edition of the 18th-century novel “Evelina” by Frances Burney, a writer she had heard of but never read. Curious, she decided to look deeper and discovered that Jane Austen probably got the title “Pride and Prejudice” from a phrase in Burney’s second novel, “Cecilia.” Romney, an Austen aficionado, wondered what else she didn’t know about the great English novelist.

She began scouring Austen’s letters and novels and learned that there were many other women who influenced Austen besides Burney, including Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Thrale Piozzi and Maria Edgeworth. Having read none of them, Romney looked for insight from critics but found little beyond the assessment that they were simply not as good as Austen.

Romney grew even more curious. If Austen loved these novels, there must be something there, she thought. She was right. In her new book, “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf,” Romney invites readers to join her on a thrilling journey of adventure and self-discovery as she reads these books and delves into the stories of their authors.

The women writers on Austen’s bookshelf were a fierce bunch. They stared down death, defeated abusive husbands, overcame enemies, gossip, the patriarchal legal system, prejudice and lechery, while winning fame, freedom and fortune in an era when “experts” said that women who read novels (let alone wrote them) were probably morally corrupt. Then they disappeared. Was it really because they weren’t as good as Austen?

This is when “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” becomes something of a detective novel.

Romney, who prides herself on being the Sherlock Holmes of the rare-book-dealer set, headed out into the wilderness of literary history, eyes peeled, looking for villains and hidden trails and secrets, slashing through forests of lies, rushing past false turns, gleefully knocking experts off their thrones, figuring out truths, and learning whom to trust (hint: herself).

First, Romney discovered that she disagreed with the experts. She loves these books. She shows us the scenes that make her guffaw or gasp, and is so persuasive about how good they are that she makes us want to read them, too. Then she turned to the question of why they fell out of the canon. The answer is complicated and slightly different for each one, but — unsurprisingly — it is not because they are bad or mediocre. It has to do with the fact that the authors were women and the books are courtship novels. Even Austen just narrowly escaped oblivion, surviving only because she got anointed by the right critics at the right time.

For the uninitiated, courtship novels might seem unimportant. They aren’t about war or the exploration of the Arctic. They are books by women for women about love and are seen as small. What a misguided assessment.

Marriage was a serious business for women in the 18th and 19th centuries. The novels these authors wrote reflect the real-life stakes they faced. At the time, married women had no legal, political or economic rights. They could not own property or represent themselves in court. Their husbands could beat them or lock them away in asylums. Even their children were not their own. When a husband had that much control over you, the kind of man you married could literally be a question of life or death. As Romney astutely writes, “The history of English courtship novels is a literary history of women’s protest” against marital law.

Romney, who grew up in a conservative town and was encouraged to bake cookies rather than do what she wanted (go white-water rafting), knows a thing or two about facing restrictions as a woman. As a student at Brigham Young University, she had to adhere to the school’s strict moral guidelines, which included three hours of church every Sunday. She got in trouble when she reached to get something off a shelf and her shirt rode up, exposing a few inches of her midriff. She loved Tori Amos but had to listen to her in secret. None of this is as bad as growing up in 18th-century England, but it was hard for Romney to break free from it without thinking she was a bad person.

In a way, this is what these 18th-century women had to do as well. Many hid their identities as authors so they would not be called immoral. The amazing thing is that they persevered.

My favorite of the eight, Charlotte Smith, was married to an abusive husband when she was only 15 and became a famous novelist out of necessity. She loved poetry, and the poems she wrote rank among the best of the era. But she needed to earn money to protect herself and her children from the brutality of her husband. And so, she churned out novel after novel, until she felt safe enough to do something astonishingly brave. She wrote introductions to her books that exposed her husband’s abuse and protested the injustices of marital law. She cautioned her readers against marrying too soon, and against marrying a rake or a gambler.

Smith was not alone. Using fiction to cover their tracks, these authors warned readers against dangerous men. As Romney writes, “Novel to novel, these women were sending messages to each other: The law will not protect you, so take steps to protect yourself.”

Writing this book led Romney, co-founder of Type Punch Matrix, a rare-book company based in the D.C. area, to come to terms with her own ideas and sense of self. “I’ve learned the confidence to distinguish between the taste of ‘authorities’ and my own,” she writes. In turn, she asks us to consider what we like and what we don’t like, not just about literature but about society and the world. What “truths” have we swallowed? Which experts should we challenge?

On the one hand, “Jane Austen’s Bookshelf” is about the women who influenced Austen. But it is much more than that. It is a meditation on reading and writing, on honesty and self-discovery — and on what books can teach us, if we let them.

Charlotte Gordon is a distinguished professor of English at Endicott College. Her most recent book is “Romantic Outlaws: The Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.”