Janine Barchas | 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

Drinking game

This fall and winter, every Janeite workweek starts with “Austen Monday”—the evening on which the Rosenbach, Philadelphia’s museum and...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 20, 2022

Long ago, I danced at a JASNA ball with a twelve-year-old girl who, when I asked if she was a Janeite, told me that she had “been raised...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 19, 2021

For Austen fans everywhere, it’s a burning question: WWJD (What Would Jane Do) in the time of coronavirus quarantine? Luckily, we now...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 26, 2020

Although Jane Austen is a quintessentially British writer, her admirers in North America are legion. Indeed, the Jane Austen Society of...

Deborah Yaffe

Jun 17, 2019

In September 1813, Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra, from their brother Edward’s library at Godmersham Park in Kent. As regular...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 22, 2018

Thirty-third in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Although Jane Austen was, famously, not a big fan of Bath,...

Deborah Yaffe

May 24, 2018

Somewhere out there, lost lambs are baa-ing to return to the fold, and a group of scholarly Bo Peeps is ready to shepherd them home. The...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 26, 2017

Jane Austen’s books feature plenty of quietly competent women going about their work with minimal fuss – and, sometimes, minimal...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 3, 2017

I’m back home after four whirlwind days at the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting – held this year in Montreal...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 13, 2014

I spent my weekend in Janeite heaven: Saturday at “Jane Austen Day,” a delightful conference sponsored by the Eastern Pennsylvania...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 28, 2014