Austen 250 2/3

The Line of Thought

. . . to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.

--Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Where Rick reigns

Over the past couple of years, my husband and I have become fans of the travel maven Rick Steves , whose lucid and well-organized...

Deborah Yaffe

Jun 2

On the rise

This week, British Janeites were treated to a new TV docudrama/literary-historical-biographical analysis/250th birthday tribute called...

Deborah Yaffe

May 29

Tempest in a teapot

Jane Austen is delightful. Tea parties are lovely. Raising money for college scholarships is admirable. So I’m ninety percent happy...

Deborah Yaffe

May 22

Dear diary

More than two centuries ago, Jane Austen’s older brother Edward Knight decided to get his Kent mansion painted. As anyone who’s endured...

Deborah Yaffe

May 15

Immersion

While Hampshire, England, is Ground Zero for Austen 250 celebrations, we Americans are doing our best to participate—and this week, the...

Deborah Yaffe

May 8

Regency playdate

Exactly 250 years ago, England saw the birth of a great artist whose innovations forever changed our culture. I speak, of course, of...

Deborah Yaffe

May 1

The other talented Austen sister

Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 28

Austen footsteps, Southampton edition

The city of Southampton makes no one’s list of England's top Jane Austen sites. Although she briefly attended school there as a child and...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 20

On foot, part II

If you missed the Autumn Walking Festival in Alton, England , next door to the Hampshire village where Jane Austen spent the last eight...

Deborah Yaffe

Feb 13

Back in the day

I still remember the first time I watched the BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice . At the time, my husband and I lived...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 30

Oh, the places you'll go

Nobody has to tell us Janeites that 2025—aka the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth—is a special year to visit Austen sites in the...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 16

Celebration, by any name

A 250th birthday goes by many names . It can be called a semiquincentennial, a sestercentennial, a quarter millennial--even a...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 2