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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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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
On this day in 1813. . .
Sixty-seventh in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Nostalgia for Jane Austen’s era has always struck me as...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 16, 2021
On this day in 1808. . .
Sixty-fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. You know how as soon as you return from vacation, it feels as...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 1, 2021
On this day in 1811. . .
Sixty-third in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. Jane Austen was perfectly capable of writing a sensitive...
Deborah Yaffe
May 31, 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
On this day in 1798. . .
Fifty-ninth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. When Jane Austen sat down to write a letter to her sister,...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 28, 2020
Still reading
The fascinating Reading with Austen project, a digital recreation of Edward Austen Knight’s library at Godmersham Park in Kent, got some...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 24, 2019
Chawton cottage at seventy
Seventy years ago this week, the premier Janeite pilgrimage site welcomed its first pilgrims. On July 23, 1949, Chawton cottage, the...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 21, 2019
Family album
The Janeite world is a-twitter (and a-Twitter) this week over the serendipitous discovery of a Victorian photo album filled with pictures...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 17, 2019
On this day in 1813. . .
Thirty-seventh in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen never lived alone. From her earliest days,...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 23, 2018
On this day in 1796. . .
Thirty-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. The young Jane Austen was a voracious reader. We know this...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 22, 2018
Death of an Austen descendant
Thanks to her four reproductively prolific brothers – James, Edward, Frank, and Charles produced an impressive total of thirty-three sons...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 5, 2018
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