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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 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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On this day in 1796. . .
Sixtieth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The record of Jane Austen’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions is...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 14, 2021
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Recovering a literary Holy Grail
It’s been more than three years since a trio of passionate Janeites formed the Godmersham Lost Sheep Society (GLOSS), an organization...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 7, 2021
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On this day in 1798. . .
Fifty-ninth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. When Jane Austen sat down to write a letter to her sister,...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 28, 2020
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On this day in 1815. . .
Fifty-eighth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Although Jane Austen was a professional writer who spent six...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 23, 2020
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On this day in 1804. . .
Fifty-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The letter that the 28-year-old Jane Austen wrote to her...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 14, 2020
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