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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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Matters of faith
What were the precise contours of Jane Austen’s religious faith? It’s an open question, given the slenderness of the evidence: some stray...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 27
Tunes
“To be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a musical society,” the newlywed Mrs. Elton reports telling her...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 17
Treasure trove
Jane Austen’s travelling writing desk , often described as the eighteenth-century equivalent of a laptop, is usually on display at the...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 6
Castle games
At first blush, The Austen Experience seems the stuff of Janeite dreams: A spring weekend spent swanning around a Swedish castle in...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 6
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
Celebrating significance
At my synagogue, members sometimes engage in public religious rituals to mark what we discreetly call “significant birthdays”--in other...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 16, 2024
Jane Austen's fingerprints
In these days of standardized computer fonts and software-assisted editing, one writer’s manuscript probably looks much like another’s....
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 9, 2024
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
Regency stylings
A few months ago, I noted with surprise that I was eagerly anticipating my next visit to a place I often describe as the most boring...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 11, 2024
Center of celebration
If next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth has an epicenter, it would surely be Jane Austen’s House , the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 24, 2024
Desk set
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth won’t officially kick off until next year, but that isn’t stopping the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 17, 2024
On foot
Jane Austen’s heroines do a lot of walking. Elizabeth Bennet strides purposefully from Longbourn to Netherfield, muddying her petticoat...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 14, 2024
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