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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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Getting it wrong
Jane Austen, it seems safe to say, is one of the most famous writers who ever lived, especially in English-speaking countries. Yet out...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 7, 2019
The dating game
Valentine’s Day, the celebration of lovers, dates back to the Middle Ages. Yet Jane Austen – often described as the mother of the romance...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 14, 2019
Nineteen
Nineteen is a number much on our collective minds today, as we prepare to usher in 2019, the last year of the second decade of the...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 31, 2018
'Twas the night before Christmas
Tomorrow is Christmas, the day on which a larger-than-life personage employing semi-equine transport suddenly appears in our homes,...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 24, 2018
On this day in 1816. . .
Fortieth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. It’s not always easy to tell when Jane Austen, master of irony,...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 17, 2018
Desperately seeking romance in Jane Austen
Virginia Woolf famously wrote of Jane Austen that “of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.” Let...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 13, 2018
On this day in 1812. . .
Thirty-ninth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Talk about burying the lead. The letter that Jane Austen...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 29, 2018
Saint Charlotte
Thanksgiving Day may seem to be a holiday with no connection whatsoever to the works of Jane Austen. True, her major novels include the...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 22, 2018
A really accomplished young computer
Jane Austen’s novels have provided the inspiration for any number of musical treatments, from operas and a classical instrumental suite...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 19, 2018
Mockingbird in a landslide
Can I get half credit? As blog readers will recall, last week I predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that Pride and Prejudice,...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 24, 2018
The envelope, please. . .
When midnight strikes on the west coast tonight, something momentous will take place: Voting will close in PBS’s Great American Read...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 17, 2018
Unfinished business
Jane Austen’s books – usually Pride and Prejudice, sometimes Emma, occasionally one of the others -- perennially land on those...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 7, 2018
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