On this day in 1808. . .
Ninety-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Janeites do not always take Jane Austen at her word when it...
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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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Deborah Yaffe
Jul 18
What remains
Two hundred and seven years ago today, Jane Austen died in Winchester, England, at the age of forty-one. It’s easy to forget how...
Deborah Yaffe
May 20
On this day in 1813. . .
Ninety-fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Only about two years of Jane Austen’s childhood were spent...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 25
On this day in 1801. . .
Ninety-first in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. A curious—and curiously contemporary--passage appears in the...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 16, 2023
On this day in 1808. . .
Eighty-ninth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Novelists are a ruthless bunch. They find grist for their...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 18, 2023
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
Jun 26, 2023
On this day in 1808. . .
Eighty-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The letter Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra,...
Deborah Yaffe
May 29, 2023
On this day in 1811. . .
Eighty-fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Nowadays, when a new acquaintance turns out to be the...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 20, 2023
On this day in 1811. . .
Eighty-fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. It’s traditional to envision Jane Austen as a homebody, and...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 10, 2023
A controversial rarity
Because Jane Austen’s letters are such rare and precious gems, it’s semi-big news whenever one of the extant 160(ish) turns up on...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 9, 2023
On this day in 1801. . .
Eighty-second in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. In January 1801, the twenty-five-year-old Jane Austen was...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 3, 2022
On this day in 1813. . .
Eighty-first in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Sometimes you read a famous author’s correspondence and...
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