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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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Killing Mr. Darcy
You’ve heard it before: Modern men can’t measure up to Jane Austen’s heroes. Straight, female Janeites are hooked on impossible...
Deborah Yaffe
May 2, 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
Adding to the list
Since March 1, we’ve swooned (tastefully) over Sanditon, chuckled at (or ignored) The Courtship, held our breath for Bridgerton’s ve-e-ry...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 25, 2022
On this day in 1805. . .
Seventy-fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Leigh-Perrot, who was married to the older brother of...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 21, 2022
Jane Austen, elixir of youth?
Last year, an Australian octogenarian named Ruth Wilson made headlines when she completed a doctoral degree on Jane Austen and the...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 18, 2022
One of Us
For a long time, we have known that at least one* Janeite lives barely a heartbeat away from the British throne: Seven years ago,...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 14, 2022
Revising the syllabus
Is Jane Austen an essential author? Must all English majors – all readers, even! – get to know her work before they can count themselves...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 11, 2022
A new Austen line
Last year, as blog readers will recall, a New York fashion designer named Jennyvi Dizon celebrated her newly minted membership in the...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 7, 2022
What lies beneath
In popular culture, Jane Austen is the avatar of buttoned-up romance – love stories featuring heroines concealed under long skirts and...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 4, 2022
A newly planted Austen society
Like a Janeite version of Johnny Appleseed, the British-Pakistani journalist and writer Laaleen Sukhera seems to be making a habit of...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 31, 2022
Beach trip
If you prefer your Jane Austen adaptations to be set in the Regency, it’s shaping up to be a good year: Sanditon’s second season has...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 28, 2022
Love hurts
The sting of rejection is an emotion whose nuances Jane Austen understood well – whether the agony of the jilted Marianne Dashwood (“Good...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 24, 2022
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