Jane Austen banknote | DeborahYaffe.com

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

The price of Austen tourism

Last summer, not long after the July 18 bicentenary of Jane Austen’s death, officials in the English town of Basingstoke announced that...

Deborah Yaffe

Jul 23, 2018

The Jane Austen £10 note has been circulating for only four months, but already its most collectible iterations are fetching inflated...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 18, 2018

When is $13 worth $9,410? When it’s embodied in a low-serial-number Jane Austen banknote, apparently. Last week, the Bank of England...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 9, 2017

It’s official: Starting today, Brits will be able to buy their tea, their scones -- even their books -- with a fistful of Jane Austen £10...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 14, 2017

I love the British press. When it comes to Jane Austen, they can manufacture a story out of the thinnest gossamer. Even recycled...

Deborah Yaffe

Jun 5, 2017

Jane Austen spent years living in straitened circumstances and earned only modest sums from her work, completely missing the giant...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 24, 2017

It’s been an entire month since I last mentioned Jane Austen and British currency in the same breath, so clearly it’s time for an update...

Deborah Yaffe

Feb 6, 2017

Happy new year, Janeites! For us fans of Jane Austen, 2017 is a big year, the biggest since – well, since 2013, when we celebrated the...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 2, 2017

Pity the poor Bank of England. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Back in July, when the Bank announced plans to...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 4, 2013