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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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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
On this day in 1798. . .
Ninety-eighth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Mary Lloyd was a friend of Jane and Cassandra Austen...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 2, 2024
Jane Austen studied here
Jane Austen’s formal education was brief. Between the ages of seven and ten, she spent a little over two years attending two different...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 28, 2024
Center of celebration
If next year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth has an epicenter, it would surely be Jane Austen’s House , the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 24, 2024
Desk set
The celebration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth won’t officially kick off until next year, but that isn’t stopping the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 17, 2024
Plain and ornamental
In his 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen , the author’s nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, reports that his famous aunt “was successful in...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 10, 2024
On this day in 1808. . .
Ninety-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Janeites do not always take Jane Austen at her word when it...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 7, 2024
What remains
Two hundred and seven years ago today, Jane Austen died in Winchester, England, at the age of forty-one. It’s easy to forget how...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 18, 2024
Endangered Dolphin, Part II
The moral seems clear: Bonnets are no match for the brutal imperatives of capitalism. It’s been five months since the owners of a...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 15, 2024
Making it up as you go along
I love the way the internet just makes stuff up. Kidding! I hate the way the internet just makes stuff up—not least when the stuff it...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 24, 2024
Endangered Dolphin
In December 1793, during a visit to cousins in the Hampshire city of Southampton, the soon-to-turn-eighteen-year-old Jane Austen danced...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 20, 2024
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