Chawton House | DeborahYaffe.com 2/5

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

Putting down roots

One hundred and twenty-five years ago, as Britain’s Queen Victoria marked a milestone sixty years on the throne, the proprietors of...

Deborah Yaffe

Jun 16, 2022

On this day in 1811. . .

Seventy-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen’s novels famously contain few detailed...

Deborah Yaffe

Jun 6, 2022

Many happy returns

The return of spring brings many pleasures. Flowers! Baby birds! And, of course, a new Jane Austen bobblehead! Back in 2020, the North...

Deborah Yaffe

May 23, 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

Eunice the Menace

Last month, a storm named Eunice ravaged large swathes of Europe. In the UK, which was hit especially hard, three people were killed,...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 10, 2022

Listening in on Chawton House

Last summer, the pandemic programmers of Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward, revived the...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 14, 2021

Autumn footsteps

Wandering around the English countryside in early autumn while talking about literature: sounds idyllic, no? And so I sighed enviously as...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 30, 2021

All the Janes

Janeites have a curious affinity for images of Our Author – even though, as I’ve noted before, we’ll never really know what she looked...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 8, 2021

Austenian medical mystery

Jane Austen’s death is tragic, because she died at only forty-one, at the height of her artistic powers. It’s also mysterious – the...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 5, 2021

Recovering a literary Holy Grail

It’s been more than three years since a trio of passionate Janeites formed the Godmersham Lost Sheep Society (GLOSS), an organization...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 7, 2021

Goodbye at last, 2020

A year ago, I confidently predicted a 2020 filled with the usual array of Austen events: “Teas, balls, fairs, festivals, conferences,...

Deborah Yaffe

Dec 31, 2020

Beautiful books, glamorous provenance

When valuable editions of Jane Austen’s novels come up for auction, the selling point is usually something about the books themselves:...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 10, 2020