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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 1796. . .
Eighty-eighth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The British have a well-documented penchant for discussing...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 18, 2023
Updating the syllabus
In the bad old days of pre-1980s academia, you could major in English literature and never be assigned a novel by Jane Austen—or so I’ve...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 14, 2023
Tok prize
In case you find yourself worried that Kids These Days just aren’t what they used to be—in other words, what we used to be—here’s some...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 11, 2023
Icing on the cake
It’s turning into a self-promoting kind of week. After taking a bow on Monday for my small contribution to the ginormous task of...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 7, 2023
Victory lap
Less than two weeks ago, apropos of my latest effort to stamp out the online plague of fake Jane Austen quotes, I wrote, “I like to...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 4, 2023
Calling all bookish cosplayers
Quick! Waste no time! You have until today at noon (US Eastern) to enter the lottery for free tickets to the Library of Congress’...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 31, 2023
Austen the agreeable
Ask Janeites about their favorite author’s political and social views, and you’ll often hear arguments that boil down to this: Jane...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 28, 2023
Sourcing and citation
Earlier this month, a man from the Maryland suburbs sent a letter to the Washington Post . “When I was reading Colbert I. King’s July 29...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 24, 2023
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
Testing, testing
In spring 2022, the right-wing British press ginned up a storm of outrage over the claim that a Scottish university had dropped Jane...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 17, 2023
Wallpapering
My husband, an aspiring rock god, owns a T-shirt reading, “How many guitars do I really need? Just one more.” Many Janeites harbor...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 14, 2023
Janeite madeleine
For Jane Austen fans, few pieces of music are as instantly recognizable as the Mozart-esque piano concerto that accompanies the credit...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 10, 2023
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