Deborah YaffeJun 22Text and subtextThese days, some thirty years after the literary critic Edward Said first offered a post-colonial reading of Mansfield Park, the idea...
Deborah YaffeJan 12Alumni reunionsOver the holidays, my family settled in for a screening of that sublime romcom Notting Hill. When the movie ended (“I’m just a girl,...
Deborah YaffeJan 5A Janeite's Janeite passes onEdith Lank, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of ninety-six, was a Janeite’s Janeite. She read and reread Austen’s novels; began...
Deborah YaffeNov 17, 2022Not so timelessAs regular blog readers know, among my favorite pastimes is mocking the internet for its habit of attributing quotations from screen...
Deborah YaffeOct 31, 2022Scary monstersHappy Halloween, Janeites! Although Austen wrote no scenes of trick-or-treating, pumpkin-carving, or gorging on candy corn, she certainly...
Deborah YaffeOct 17, 2022SnoozePeople who hate Jane Austen – yes, such benighted folks do exist – sometimes claim that she is so-o-o boring that she causes eyelids to...
Deborah YaffeJun 14, 2021On this day in 1814. . . Sixty-fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen’s letters. No author – not even Jane Austen -- is immune to the charm...
Deborah YaffeMay 13, 2021Data storage, the Jane Austen wayAnyone whose college papers reside on now-unreadable floppy disks has probably wondered whether the human race is on the brink of an...
Deborah YaffeMay 6, 2021Interrogating an interrogationAmong my many Janeite pet peeves is the caricaturing of Austen fans as prudish ultraconservatives who stick their fingers in their ears...
Deborah YaffeApr 15, 2021Cross-channel connectionsJane Austen is usually thought of as a quintessentially English writer, what with all those landed estates, rural rectories, and mannerly...
Deborah YaffeApr 1, 2021On 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 YaffeMar 11, 2021Old issues, new questionsFive years ago, I wrote a magazine article about the controversy over Woodrow Wilson’s repugnant racial views – an aspect of the...