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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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Ending on a high note
This past year, we can probably all agree, hasn’t been one of the planet’s best. But there’s still time to end 2021 on a happier note –...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 27, 2021
Stocking stuffers
Christmas is almost here, but I have no sugar plums or partridge-equipped pear trees with which to gift my blog readers. Instead, I will...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 23, 2021
Austen women
Jane Austen isn’t just for girls, of course, but the Austenesque tidbits that the internet has tossed my way lately happen to focus on...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 20, 2021
Many happy returns
Two hundred and forty-six years ago today, a daughter was born to Cassandra Leigh Austen and her husband, the Reverend George Austen. The...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 16, 2021
Never heard of him
In George Orwell’s 1984, the dictatorial regime ruling Oceania requires its minions to drop documentation of inconvenient historical...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 13, 2021
Crunch time
Kids! Always leaving their homework to the last minute! Last summer, as blog readers will recall, a British judge sentenced a young man...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 9, 2021
On this day in 1814. . .
Seventieth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The author of Pride and Prejudice may have been an anonymous...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 6, 2021
Jane and the feathered friend
Jane Austen assuredly never saw a penguin: According to the Zoological Society of London, it wasn’t until 1865, nearly fifty years after...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 2, 2021
The long-awaited Longbourn?
Last month brought the sad news that an eagerly awaited Austen adaptation – the Searchlight Pictures version of Persuasion, starring...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 29, 2021
On this day in 1798. . .
Sixty-ninth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Jane Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, who wrote...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 25, 2021
Talking about "talking"
In the social world of Jane Austen’s Regency, young people navigated a complex set of unwritten rules for managing friendship and...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 22, 2021
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
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