Sandy Lerner | 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

Summer fun

Chawton House, the Elizabethan mansion in Hampshire, England, once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight, has had a busy...

Deborah Yaffe

Jul 27, 2023

Twenty years ago this summer, American tech mogul and Janeite Sandy Lerner finished up her multimillion-dollar restoration of an...

Deborah Yaffe

Apr 17, 2023

Last summer, the pandemic programmers of Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward, revived the...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 14, 2021

The transformation of Chawton House from purely academic destination into full-service Janeite tourist draw continues: The stately home...

Deborah Yaffe

Oct 15, 2018

The past year’s drama at Chawton House Library has sometimes seemed more appropriate to one of the Gothic romances Jane Austen satirized...

Deborah Yaffe

Dec 4, 2017

The ongoing saga of Chawton House Library’s beloved Shire horses – likely casualties of the Austen site’s cost-cutting campaign – is...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 18, 2017

There are many things I would be willing to do to secure the future of Chawton House Library, one of the Austen world’s great treasures....

Deborah Yaffe

Jul 20, 2017

Unless Queen Elizabeth II is a secret Austen fan, the richest living Janeite is probably Sandy Lerner, the co-founder of Cisco Systems...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 7, 2016