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Journalist and author
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
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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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
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, 2025
Crossover artist
Jane Austen is the ultimate crossover artist, with an unchallenged position in both literary studies and popular culture. (Hey, didn’t...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 21, 2024
Thriller
Are you feeling sad that you won’t be able to join the Jane Austen 250th Birthday festivities in England next year? Fear not! You can...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 18, 2024
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