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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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Selling Scarlets, again
We Janeites would kill to live in an Austen-linked stately home. That goes without saying. But – is it possible that such properties are...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 25, 2021
On this day in 1815. . .
Sixty-eighth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Last month, I noted that Jane Austen’s account of a...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 18, 2021
On this day in 1813. . .
Sixty-seventh in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Nostalgia for Jane Austen’s era has always struck me as...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 16, 2021
Housekeeping
Jane Austen apparently liked to eat – “You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge-cake is to me,” she wrote to her sister in June...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 5, 2021
On this day in 1808. . .
Sixty-fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. You know how as soon as you return from vacation, it feels as...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 1, 2021
On this day in 1811. . .
Sixty-third in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Jane Austen was perfectly capable of writing a sensitive...
Deborah Yaffe
May 31, 2021
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...
Deborah Yaffe
May 6, 2021
Upstairs, downstairs
When Keira Knightley was cast as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 feature film of Pride and Prejudice, she worried that her performance would...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 26, 2021
Cross-channel connections
Jane Austen is usually thought of as a quintessentially English writer, what with all those landed estates, rural rectories, and mannerly...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 15, 2021
Strange brew
One of the many, many reasons I am glad not to live in the time of Jane Austen – right up there with the absence of antibiotics, reliable...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 12, 2021
Austenian medical mystery
Jane Austen’s death is tragic, because she died at only forty-one, at the height of her artistic powers. It’s also mysterious – the...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 5, 2021
On this day in 1801. . .
Sixty-first in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen communicated nothing particularly remarkable in...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 11, 2021
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