Snooze
People who hate Jane Austen – yes, such benighted folks do exist – sometimes claim that she is so-o-o boring that she causes eyelids to...
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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
- Oct 10, 2022
Expensive thrills
For Janeites, the Austen First Edition Thrill-o-Meter is calibrated something like this: Biggest Thrill: Austen novel first edition owned...
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 8, 2022
Laying the table
From time to time, a particular news item brings a snippet of Jane Austen’s wisdom forcibly to mind – such a snippet as, say, “One half...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 22, 2022
Thin gruel
Early last Tuesday morning, I opened up my phone to Wordle, the now-famous daily word-finding puzzle, and typed my usual starting guess:...
Deborah Yaffe
- Apr 4, 2022
What lies beneath
In popular culture, Jane Austen is the avatar of buttoned-up romance – love stories featuring heroines concealed under long skirts and...
Deborah Yaffe
- Feb 3, 2022
Mouthwatering
Austen-influenced crafts come in many forms. There are knitting patterns. There are board games. There are tote bags and jewelry and...
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 27, 2021
The opposite of speed reading
How long does it take to read a Jane Austen novel? At roughly three hundred pages apiece, her books are far shorter than the works of...
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 2, 2021
Forever Cher
For an actor, it must be frustrating to realize that you will be remembered almost solely for a role you played at the age of eighteen....
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 30, 2021
Quill and paper
In Sense and Sensibility, as Janeites will recall, Elinor Dashwood and her rival, Lucy Steele, spend a tense evening sparring genteelly...
Deborah Yaffe
- Jun 17, 2021
In the green room
It’s a funny time right now for us theater-loving Janeites: Some of our favorite things are still virtual, others are on their way back...
Deborah Yaffe
- Jun 10, 2021
Party like. . .
Five years ago, in a blog post headlined “Party like it’s 1995,” I heralded a forthcoming spate of filmed Jane Austen adaptations – a...
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