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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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Phone books
Back in 2017, Jane Austen’s birthplace, the Hampshire village of Steventon, marked the bicentennial of her death by converting a disused...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 2, 2023
Better luck this time?
Nearly five years ago, a Canadian lawyer named Tara Rout floated the notion of buying Luckington Court, the UK mansion that played...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 2, 2023
At your service
When you shell out $250 to $450 for a night in a university town’s boutique hotel, what amenities do you expect to get for your money?...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 8, 2022
Sale in Aisle A
Attention, bargain hunters! Five years ago, you would have needed £9 million (about $11 million) to buy Luckington Court, the Cotswolds...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 15, 2022
Putting down roots
One hundred and twenty-five years ago, as Britain’s Queen Victoria marked a milestone sixty years on the throne, the proprietors of...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 16, 2022
Many happy returns
The return of spring brings many pleasures. Flowers! Baby birds! And, of course, a new Jane Austen bobblehead! Back in 2020, the North...
Deborah Yaffe
May 23, 2022
Under the floorboards
When I was a little girl, my favorite toy was my dollhouse. I liked setting up tiny roomscapes filled with detailed, perfectly manageable...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 28, 2022
Eunice the Menace
Last month, a storm named Eunice ravaged large swathes of Europe. In the UK, which was hit especially hard, three people were killed,...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 10, 2022
Vows
It’s a hopeless task -- the effort to convince casual fans that Jane Austen isn’t really the patron saint of weddings. No matter how...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 17, 2022
Another mansion for sale
Once again, it’s time for every Janeite’s favorite sport: eying up palatial real estate with tangential Jane Austen associations. Today’s...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 18, 2021
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
Listening in on Chawton House
Last summer, the pandemic programmers of Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward, revived the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 14, 2021
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