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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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Broadening the collection
The last time the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft was the subject of a public fundraising effort, the results were...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 15, 2022
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
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