Deborah YaffeJun 29Misaligned starsFour months ago, as blog readers will recall, I turned to the internet for reading suggestions and discovered that my Zodiac sign...
Deborah YaffeJun 26On this day in 1808. . . Eighty-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The letter Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra,...
Deborah YaffeJun 22Text and subtextThese days, some thirty years after the literary critic Edward Said first offered a post-colonial reading of Mansfield Park, the idea...
Deborah YaffeJun 19Using up the leftoversBefore leaving on vacation, I always try to clean out my refrigerator—no point in coming home to sour milk and moldy vegetables. Since I...
Deborah YaffeJun 15Writer's writerVirginia Woolf famously remarked that “of all great writers [Jane Austen] is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.”...
Deborah YaffeJun 12Edward Knight, publican?Edward Knight, Jane Austen’s third-oldest brother, was a husband, a father, a landowner, and the man who provided one of England’s...
Deborah YaffeJun 8Eliza's harpJane Austen’s extended family was largely composed of respectable clergymen, naval officers, and landowners, along with their equally...
Deborah YaffeJun 5Cracking Easter eggsBack in April, when a (supposed) first edition of Sense and Sensibility made a cameo appearance in the Apple soccer comedy Ted Lasso,...
Deborah YaffeJun 1Death of an unabashed JaneiteMartin Amis’ death last month at the age of seventy-three didn’t hit me as hard as it did the legions of bookish lads who fell for his...
