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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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Coveted rarities
As regular blog readers know, I have a not-so-secret hankering for Jane Austen first editions, along with nothing like enough money to...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 21, 2023
How P&P came to be
It’s a great time for programming at Jane Austen’s House, the cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen wrote or revised all six of her...
Deborah Yaffe
May 25, 2023
Listening pleasure
It’s been a sadly long time since I strolled through the garden at Jane Austen’s House, the cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Austen...
Deborah Yaffe
May 22, 2023
False advertising?
Like many Janeites, I know scattered bits of Austen by heart. I can proclaim the first sentences of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, recite...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 24, 2023
Failures
As a way to make a living, writing pretty much sucks, as most writers not named James Patterson or Malcolm Gladwell can tell you. So I...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 6, 2023
Recommended reading
In a world with so many books and so little time, reading recommendations--from critics, bloggers, celebrity talk-show hosts,...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 20, 2023
Triggered
In my junior year of college, the assigned reading for my women’s studies class included Gloria Naylor’s 1982 novel The Women of Brewster...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 13, 2023
Jane Austen's desk, online
The Jane Austen Summer Program, whose four-day symposium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, combines academic study of Austen with...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 19, 2023
Father knows best
Although Jane Austen’s novels never commanded huge print runs – the biggest, for Emma, totaled only two thousand copies -- Austen first...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 22, 2022
Quack
As luck would have it, my family’s Thanksgiving guest list this year will once again consist of none but our four selves. And just as we...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 24, 2022
Scary monsters
Happy Halloween, Janeites! Although Austen wrote no scenes of trick-or-treating, pumpkin-carving, or gorging on candy corn, she certainly...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 31, 2022
Lucky thirteen
Thirty-nine years ago, during my first semester of college, I took the train from New Haven to Philadelphia to attend my first Jane...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 29, 2022
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