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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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Love among the stacks
Is Jane Austen a romance novelist? Discuss. Or, if you’re not interested in revisiting your test-taking days, you could just travel to...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 19, 2024
Lab work
The Race and Regency Lab, an intriguing new scholarly project that aims to “reimagine our understandings of race” in Jane Austen’s era,...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 12, 2024
Regency fashion, off the beaten path
My husband grew up in the northwestern English city of Lancaster. It is not my favorite place. The weather is frequently dank and...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 15, 2024
Stars and bonnets
If the midsummer doldrums are threatening to swallow you up, a cure may be on the horizon: The fifth annual iteration of VirtualJaneCon,...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 11, 2024
The Shirt, unveiled
Sometimes launching a museum exhibition is a complicated process, as catalogs are researched, international loan agreements negotiated,...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 13, 2024
Wondering about Alice
Chawton House, the Elizabethan mansion once owned by Jane Austen’s older brother Edward, has worked hard to transform itself from a...
Deborah Yaffe
May 27, 2024
Embroidering Chawton
The last time I completed a significant piece of needlework (see below) was during the early months of pandemic quarantine, when being...
Deborah Yaffe
May 2, 2024
Taking liberties
In 2021, London theatergoers got a Pride and Prejudice with interpolated pop songs and an all-female cast. In 2022, they got a...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 15, 2024
A stroll in paradise
Last year, I was lucky enough to spend a day at the Huntington, a place to see rare books, great artwork, and spectacular botanical...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 22, 2024
Jane-talk, sponsored
Back in the summer of 2022, TikTok kicked off its inaugural book club with a group reading of Persuasion. Allegedly, the TikTok Book Club...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 4, 2024
The sounds of Jane Austen Christmas
Emma Woodhouse’s Christmas holiday is not a good one, as readers of Emma will recall: On Christmas Eve, she fends off Mr. Elton’s...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 21, 2023
Adaptable
In the two centuries since Jane Austen’s death, her novels have proved almost infinitely adaptable, transmuted into stage plays, radio...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 6, 2023
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