Coveted rarities
As regular blog readers know, I have a not-so-secret hankering for Jane Austen first editions, along with nothing like enough money 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
- Dec 22, 2022
Father knows best
Although Jane Austen’s novels never commanded huge print runs – the biggest, for Emma, totaled only two thousand copies -- Austen first...
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
- May 19, 2022
Sticker shock
Apparently, it’s not just gas and hotel rooms: Pandemic-era inflation has also hit the rare book market. Or so we learned from a recent...
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 20, 2021
Pricey, and priceless
It’s always nice to know that other people value Our Jane the way we do. Like, value her in dollars. Last week, as blog readers will...
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 13, 2021
Austens with a pedigree
Owning first editions of Jane Austen’s novels – ideally, as I’ve noted before, of all Jane Austen’s novels – must be . . . pretty cool....
Deborah Yaffe
- Nov 12, 2020
Another chance at completion
Less than a year ago, a rich person with excellent taste snapped up a complete set of Jane Austen first editions at a New York auction....
Deborah Yaffe
- Sep 9, 2020
Beautiful books, glamorous provenance
When valuable editions of Jane Austen’s novels come up for auction, the selling point is usually something about the books themselves:...
Deborah Yaffe
- Feb 27, 2020
Completist completes
Apparently, I’m not the only Jane Austen completist out there. Last week, as blog readers will recall, the New York auction house Swann...
Deborah Yaffe
- Feb 13, 2020
The price of perfection
I was born with a completist gene. I like to finish things up – books, TV series, leftovers. I like to own full sets of things. I abhor...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 29, 2018
P&P on the block
Once again, it’s time to play “If I Were a Rich Janeite.” (Cue klezmer music.) The British auctioneer Bonhams has announced that, later...
Deborah Yaffe
- Aug 19, 2018
Collecting the uncollected
Fifteen years ago, Silicon Valley gazillionaire and Janeite Sandy Lerner opened Chawton House, a research library dedicated to the...
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