In March of 1807, publisher Benjamin Crosby was incensed with a rival publisher, J.F. Hughes. Just as Crosby was bringing out A Winter in Bath, his own entry into the fashionable “Season” novel genre, Hughes advertised a book with the copy-cat title A Winter at Bath. In fact, Crosby accuses Hughes of using the same title, A Winter in Bath, but I don't know if Hughes ever advertised his version or sold it under any other title than A Winter AT Bath.
  At any rate, Crosby took out large advertisements, threatening to sue Hughes. Hughes just laughed in return. His novel was from the “chaste and classical pen of Mrs. Bayfield,” and he questioned why A Winter in Bath was advertised merely as being “by the author of two popular novels.” Why so coy, Crosby? Hughes’s advertisements said things like: “Mrs. Bayfield disclaims all connection with an Anonymous Publication, of nearly the same title; and the Publisher invites the Public to read both competitions, and judge,” or “Be careful to ask for Mrs. Bayfield’s as there is another without the Author’s name.”

    The following year, Hughes brought out another “season” novel, City Nobility, or, A Summer at Margate, and, just to wind Crosby up even more, he advertised it as being by the author of “two popular novels.” With sneer quotes, even. Oh Hughes, you scamp.
    Hughes often used copy-cat author’s names or titles to trick the public into thinking they were buying a novel by a best-selling authoress like Frances Burney or Ann Radcliffe, or a famous gothic novel like The Monk. His business didn’t prosper in any event, because he declared bankruptcy more than once and he seems to have made enemies in the publishing community.
    At any rate, I thought I would read City Nobility or a Summer at Margate, whether or not its author actually had already written two popular novels...​

   Fedaretta, like The Duke of Clarence, was published in 1795, making them the earliest titles in the attribution chain. Fedaretta was published by the more prestigious publisher Crosby, while The Duke of Clarence was published by [ahem] Minerva. No copies of Fedaretta survive in any libraries, except for an undigitized 1803 French translation which is preserved in France. Fedaretta received a review in French, which Google translates thusly:

     So much for Fedaretta, unless a surviving copy of the original English version comes to hand.

Emily of Lucerne
    Emily of Lucerne (1800) is an outlier in the 21 titles which make up the tangled attribution chain of works possibly written by the author of The Woman of Colour (1809). It is a strange pastiche of a novel of manners, set in London, with a jarringly different gothic interlude set in a castle in Europe, complete with fake ghost. My guess is that the author, who signs herself as "EMF," had an old half-finished draft novel about London society, then she grafted in a gothic short story she also happened to have lying around, to stretch the tale out to two volumes. As she had been lucky enough to place several of her manuscripts with Minerva that year, she must have quickly prepared this one and sold it to them as well, on the strength of the others.
    We start with a heroine raised in Switzerland and brought back to London after her parents die (reminder--most sentimental heroines are orphans). Having no living relatives, she is briefly under the guardianship of a wise older woman who was her father’s first love. 
     When I was reading Volume One, I felt that it was completely different from the humourless and heavy-handed moralizing of other early titles which have been attributed to “Mrs. Foster,” ( Miriam, Judith, Rebecca, Caroline & Frederic, and Concealment). For example, in Emily of Lucerne there are no references to the “Great Disposer of Events” or “The Almighty”, whom the narrator and the virtuous characters frequently reference in those novels. No admonitions to submit ourselves to the will of an inscrutable Providence. Instead we have: “For the improvement which [Emily’s] natural taste had received, she was indebted to the good St. Aubin... But the good priest [also] endeavoured to implant early in her heart a deep reverence for her Creator, under whatsoever form she chose to worship him”
    Under whatsoever form she chose to worship him? What kind of apostasy is that? 

​     A naïve young lady travels to Bath with an older female companion and ventures into society. She meets a charming and witty young man. But will her dreams of romance be destroyed when it is discovered that she is not from a wealthy and distinguished family?
     This is not Northanger Abbey, this is The Aunt and the Niece. The Aunt and the Niece was anonymously published in 1804, and was subsequently attributed to the author of Eversfield Abbey (1806), The Woman of Colour (1808), and other novels. If the attribution chain is correct, this authoress moved from Minerva Press (considered to be a low-brow publishing house) to the respectable John Crosby and then to Black, Perry, and Kingsbury, publishers who did not specialize in fiction. Then she went back to Minerva for two more novels. The authoress could be Mrs. Bayfield, but Mrs. E.M. Foster is also tangled up in this chain of attributions--or it might even be a third person whose name has been lost.
    The Aunt and the Niece is a brisk-moving two-volume novel with a satisfying amount of drama. Typically of novels of this period, it relies upon untimely death and misunderstanding for its plot, and coincidence for its resolution. The villains are satisfyingly despicable. In fact, the authoress throws some shade at her readers when she suggests that they won't be as interested in the virtuous characters...

       So where are you in your journey from Austen fan to Austen superfan? Have you worked out the Austen family tree? Do you smile politely when someone quotes Austen's "little bit of ivory" at you, because you've already heard or read it a hundred times? Have you read any or all of the novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey? Did you know that "Lover's Vows," the play performed by the young people in Mansfield Park, was a real play?
      In my opinion, Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney is geared toward people who are not far along in their Austen journey, but are ready and eager to learn more. On the other hand, well-informed Janeites might find that it covers familiar territory, while others might be bemused by the proposition that Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney are forgotten writers whose connection to Austen was waiting to be rediscovered.
    I don't mean that as a criticism of a well-written and deeply researched book, which this is. For someone wanting to learn more about Austen and her literary world, Jane Austen's Bookshelf is packed with revelations for the reader (I'll get back to that later) and a valuable guidebook to the literature of her time.