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
The best company
When you’re off to attend the Jane Austen Society of North America’s annual conference, and the theme of that conference is Persuasion,...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 26, 2018
Belonging
Last year, I blogged about Alejandra Carles-Tolra, a young Spanish photographer, based in London, who had won a competitive grant to...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 19, 2018
Not very Jane Austen at all
Dissing the members of the British royal family -- at least the popular ones -- is not for the faint of heart. Jane Austen confined her...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 16, 2018
Sightings
One of the occupational hazards of Janeite life is a heightened sensitivity to every mention of Jane Austen, no matter the context....
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 12, 2018
Naked(-ish) in Bath
Poor never-married Jane Austen: Lacking nuptials, she never got a bachelorette party, either. Strange, then – not to say strangely...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 9, 2018
Death of an anti-Janeite
The death last week of Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul prompted the customary chorus of praise for his writing, as well as the...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 15, 2018
Death of an Austen descendant
Thanks to her four reproductively prolific brothers – James, Edward, Frank, and Charles produced an impressive total of thirty-three sons...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 5, 2018
Tiara time again
It’s been almost four years since we had a reason to put “Jane Austen” and “beauty pageant” in the same sentence. Frankly, we were...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 18, 2018
Remembering feminist history
In Jane Austen’s time, as we know, women’s lives and opportunities were circumscribed in ways we can scarcely imagine today. Women were...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 8, 2018
What's in a name?
Shakespeare’s ardent fans are called Bardolators, not Willcolytes. Dickens admirers are Dickensians, not Chuck-a-holics. Devotees of...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 4, 2018
Graphing the plot
Back in high school, I did reasonably well in math. I may have trouble balancing my checkbook these days, but I promise I’m not one of...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 24, 2018
Ready for its closeups
A couple of months ago, when Jane Austen’s House Museum unveiled the results of the collaborative quilting project it organized to...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 17, 2018
bottom of page