In a letter of December 1798 Jane Austen told Cassandra that they were subscribing to a new library. The proprietress had written with the assurance that her collection was not limited to novels, prompting Austen to comment: ‘She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel-readers & not ashamed of being so’ (L, 18–19 December). Mr Austen's taste was liberal, encompassing ‘every species of literature’, according to Henry Austen’s ‘Biographical Notice’. The family's enthusiasm for the stage meant that the barn at the rectory at Steventon was fitted up as a theatre and Austen's earliest experiences of English drama was in hearing rehearsals of comedies or farces by writers like Isaac Bickerstaffe, Susannah Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, Henry Fielding, David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Despite her brother’s emphasis on serious literature in his memoir Jane Austen was as fond of low comedy and sensational novels as collections of sermons. Theatrical productions helped to populate her work with comic archetypes: rakes, hypocrites, simperers, blusterers, garrulous purveyors of scandal and trivia and grumpy spouses wearily resigned to the incorrigible folly of their partners.

Gothic fiction also found its way into the parsonage: JaneAusten described her father in the evening reading The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis Lathom (L, 24 October 1798). Isabella Thorpe's enthusiasm for the same story in Northanger Abbey (1:6) explains why Mr Austen borrowed it from the library rather than buying it. He did, however, acquire Arthur Fitz Albini (1798) a novel by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, who had rented the parsonage at Deane. Austen found it odd ‘that we should purchase the only one of Egerton's works of which his family are ashamed’. But, she told Cassandra, ‘these scruples … do not at all interfere with my reading it’ (L, 25November 1798). Austen's toleration for those who defied convention was not unlimited, however, and she later discarded a translation of Madame de Genlis's Alphonsine (1807). ‘We were disgusted in twenty pages … it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure’ (L, 7–8 January 1807). Mr Austen's library of more than 500 books had to be sold when the family left the parsonage at Steventon and moved to Bath.