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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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Tempest in a teapot
Jane Austen is delightful. Tea parties are lovely. Raising money for college scholarships is admirable. So I’m ninety percent happy...
Deborah Yaffe
May 22
Dancing as if it's 2005
Twenty years, to quote Captain Wentworth, is “a period, indeed”—more than enough time “to change every pore of one’s skin, & every...
Deborah Yaffe
May 19
Dear diary
More than two centuries ago, Jane Austen’s older brother Edward Knight decided to get his Kent mansion painted. As anyone who’s endured...
Deborah Yaffe
May 15
Frank disappointment
Jane Austen seems to have adored her older brother Francis. In the handful of letters that survive from their correspondence, she...
Deborah Yaffe
May 12
Immersion
While Hampshire, England, is Ground Zero for Austen 250 celebrations, we Americans are doing our best to participate—and this week, the...
Deborah Yaffe
May 8
On this day in 1801. . .
One hundred and first in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. How improper were Jane Austen’s letters? By...
Deborah Yaffe
May 5
Regency playdate
Exactly 250 years ago, England saw the birth of a great artist whose innovations forever changed our culture. I speak, of course, of...
Deborah Yaffe
May 1
The other talented Austen sister
Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 28
Here we go again
The first still-extant screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice , the MGM movie starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier as Elizabeth...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 24
On this day in 1816. . .
One hundredth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. As we Janeites never tire of pointing out, Jane Austen...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 21
In for a penny. . .
Penny Ashton is a New Zealand actor and comedian who has created two Jane Austen-inspired shows: the one-woman Promise & Promiscuity , ...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 17
Good hair day?
What did Jane Austen look like? As I’ve noted before (for example, here and here ), we can’t be sure. We have only one portrait we know...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 14
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