EngLit 3/5

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

Keeping up with the Kambridges

Trendy fashion accessories come and go. One year, it’s thigh-high red boots and black berets; the next it’s purple shoes and tiny...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 1, 2020

Attic treasures

To read the news these days, you’d think that attics across the world were bursting with the previously unsuspected memorabilia of famous...

Deborah Yaffe

May 15, 2019

Another bicentenary girl

Back when I was in elementary school, ranking one’s friends – best friend, second-best friend, third-best friend – was a popular pastime....

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 4, 2019

Mockingbird in a landslide

Can I get half credit? As blog readers will recall, last week I predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that Pride and Prejudice,...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 24, 2018

The envelope, please. . .

When midnight strikes on the west coast tonight, something momentous will take place: Voting will close in PBS’s Great American Read...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 17, 2018

On this day in 1813. . .

Thirty-eighth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Some writers fill their letters with detailed responses to...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 10, 2018

On this day in 1813. . .

Thirty-seventh in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen never lived alone. From her earliest days,...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 23, 2018

Collecting the uncollected

Fifteen years ago, Silicon Valley gazillionaire and Janeite Sandy Lerner opened Chawton House, a research library dedicated to the...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 19, 2018

Excellent women novelists

Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral, as all good Janeites know, but it’s another prominent medieval English church that will...

Deborah Yaffe

May 30, 2018

On this day in 1814. . .

Thirty-first in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Two centuries ago, Jane Austen had spent her day...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 8, 2018

Women writers, popping up

In your average general-interest bookshop, a majority of the titles have probably been authored by men. No surprise there – historically,...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 5, 2018

On the trail of great writers

Logically, there’s no particular reason we dedicated readers should yearn to visit the houses where our favorite writers were born, grew...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 9, 2017