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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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On this day in 1816. . .
One hundred and second in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The letter Jane Austen wrote to her 23-year-old...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 23
On the rise
This week, British Janeites were treated to a new TV docudrama/literary-historical-biographical analysis/250th birthday tribute called...
Deborah Yaffe
May 29
Dear diary
More than two centuries ago, Jane Austen’s older brother Edward Knight decided to get his Kent mansion painted. As anyone who’s endured...
Deborah Yaffe
May 15
Frank disappointment
Jane Austen seems to have adored her older brother Francis. In the handful of letters that survive from their correspondence, she...
Deborah Yaffe
May 12
The other talented Austen sister
Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 28
On this day in 1816. . .
One hundredth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. As we Janeites never tire of pointing out, Jane Austen...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 21
Good hair day?
What did Jane Austen look like? As I’ve noted before (for example, here and here ), we can’t be sure. We have only one portrait we know...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 14
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
Clearing the backlog
It’s been a grand total of four weeks since I last reported on Jane Austen-related misinformation/foolishness on the internet. And...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 24
G.I. Jane
Nothing depresses my spirits more quickly than an article promising to reveal Surprising Facts About Jane Austen. What follows—whether...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 27
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
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