Interrogating an interrogation
Among my many Janeite pet peeves is the caricaturing of Austen fans as prudish ultraconservatives who stick their fingers in their ears...
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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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Deborah Yaffe
- Mar 11, 2021
Old issues, new questions
Five years ago, I wrote a magazine article about the controversy over Woodrow Wilson’s repugnant racial views – an aspect of the...
Deborah Yaffe
- Jul 20, 2020
Dining out
I don’t know about you, but I miss dinner parties. You remember dinner parties: those occasions on which you gathered with friends –...
Deborah Yaffe
- Jul 16, 2020
Reckoning with the past
By now, it’s no surprise to find Jane Austen’s name surfacing in discussions of Britain’s unsavory imperial history: The debate over the...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 15, 2019
Companions
Thirteen years ago, when PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre aired a new adaptation of Jane Eyre, the network offered viewers a chance to buy...
Deborah Yaffe
- Jul 4, 2019
Free to be. . .
On this holiday of freedom from tyranny, including the tyranny of conventional expectations, it seems appropriate to spend a moment...
Deborah Yaffe
- May 9, 2019
Women in blue
Among London’s many delights are the blue plaques that mark buildings associated with historical personages both famous and obscure....
Deborah Yaffe
- Apr 8, 2019
Jane Austen's first critic
For Janeites, it’s salt rubbed in a wound: the news that scholars will soon be able to inspect a fascinating trove of letters from an...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 13, 2018
Lucky thirteen
Name the ten most important vegetables! Quick now! Does broccoli outrank kale? How about carrots vs. turnips? Yes, yes, I know they’re...
Deborah Yaffe
- Feb 13, 2017
Dweeby Darcy
Edward IV, who reigned as king of England for most of the period from 1461-1483, was described by contemporaries as an unusually handsome...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 8, 2016
Austen sleuthing
Although “Jane Austen Detectives” sounds like the title of a beach book I’d want to read, it’s actually the name of a sixteen-month-old...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 4, 2016
Sharing scholarship
And here's the second addition this week to the category of Nifty Web Sites I Only Just Heard About: The 18th-Century Common, “a public...
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