top of page
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
Search
Everyone's a fan
Discovering a fellow Janeite can be a bittersweet experience. Sometimes it’s the delightful reassurance that you’re not alone in your...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 26
The year's last snark
It’s always tempting to gorge on soon-to-be-forbidden foods in the days before starting a diet. Similarly, as New Year’s Resolution time...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 30, 2024
Janeite grandmother
In this season of brutal political combat, it’s consoling to remember back to a less conflict-ridden past. And so it is that I felt a...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 5, 2024
Craving the misery
Five years ago, the British journalist Tanya Gold wrote a whole article about how much she dislikes Jane Austen. Now, in an article about...
Deborah Yaffe
May 30, 2024
Happy (early) anniversary
The years 2011-2018 saw a host of important Jane Austen bicentenaries, both happy and sad --the 200th anniversaries of the publications...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 25, 2024
Snooze
Earlier this year, I had the occasion (read: an excuse) to rewatch several of the feature-film adaptations of Emma. I reconfirmed the...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 22, 2024
Janeite on the Potomac, Part III
Out here in the ‘burbs, our government appears to be a playground for the pompous, the sycophantic, the whiny, the treacherous, and the...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 7, 2024
Girly stuff
My husband likes to read. But the books he picks! All those violent Nordic thrillers! All those biographies of rock musicians! All those...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 11, 2023
Short and sweet
Fellow novelists do not invariably appreciate Jane Austen—looking at you, Charlotte Brontë!—but it’s always a pleasure when they do. And...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 27, 2023
Writer's writer
Virginia Woolf famously remarked that “of all great writers [Jane Austen] is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.”...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 15, 2023
Death of an unabashed Janeite
Martin Amis’ death last month at the age of seventy-three didn’t hit me as hard as it did the legions of bookish lads who fell for his...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 1, 2023
False advertising?
Like many Janeites, I know scattered bits of Austen by heart. I can proclaim the first sentences of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, recite...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 24, 2023
bottom of page