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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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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 27, 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
Sep 2, 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
Aug 30, 2021
On fire
Nearly two years ago, word trickled out that a same-sex update of Pride and Prejudice, set on the gay mecca of New York’s Fire Island,...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 15, 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 17, 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...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 10, 2021
Reboot, booted
Back in late 2019, when corona was just a neighborhood in Queens, the news broke that Hollywood was considering a television reboot of...
Deborah Yaffe
May 24, 2021
Costume drama
It’s Oscar night on Sunday, and even though this year will inevitably lack the red-carpet glamor of pre-pandemic times, I will avidly...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 22, 2021
On this day in 1816. . .
Sixty-second in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. From time to time, you will hear writers claim that they...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 1, 2021
The Emma Trap
What is the nature of inspiration? How elastic is its definition? How large a distance can stretch between inspiration and inspiree...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 15, 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
New Year's present
On March 2, I reported the happy news that a theatrical adaptation of Emma – written by Kate Hamill, the actor/playwright whose madcap...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 24, 2020
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