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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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Coming attractions
The telltale compression of the calendar pages confirms that we are hastening toward the end of this landmark Austen 250 year. But don’t despair: With several marquee adaptations moving swiftly through the pipeline, it’s clear that 2026 will keep the flame alive.  The latest news comes courtesy of an interview with Fiona Shaw, the British actor who is starring in not one but two of the in-process Austens: The Netflix mini-series of Pride and Prejudice , in which she plays L
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 17
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Coming of age
Say this for Jane Austen: She’s an inexhaustible source of roles for actresses who have aged out of the film industry’s ingenue...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 28
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Hatching time
Like periodical cicadas, Austen adaptations come around on a predictable schedule. Every ten or fifteen years, a newly hatched crew of...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 24
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Picking favorites
When I’m asked which Jane Austen novel is my favorite—and if you write a book about Jane Austen fandom, you will be asked this question...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 7
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Back in the day
I still remember the first time I watched the BBC’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice .  At the time, my husband and I lived...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 30
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On this day in 1813. . .
Ninety-seventh in an occasional series  of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters.  What tribute does a friend owe to a published author?...
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 7, 2024
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Celebrating S&S
Over the past decade-plus, as Jane Austen’s novels reached their publication bicentennials, writer and scholar Sarah Emsley invited...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 27, 2024
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Growth spurt
Back in the 2010s, when I first started reading Jane Austen fanfic, the typical example of the genre was a romance novel, either Regency...
Deborah Yaffe
May 9, 2024
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Playing it safe
Early in the Hallmark Channel’s new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, the recently bereaved Dashwood women stand on the front steps of...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 26, 2024
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Noted
When my children were in grade school, their English teachers often required them to annotate their reading: For each chapter, students...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 18, 2024
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Austenian situationships
“There is a scene in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility where the hopelessly romantic Marianne Dashwood writes a letter to a man she...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 15, 2024
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Jane-talk, sponsored
Back in the summer of 2022, TikTok kicked off its inaugural book club with a group reading of Persuasion. Allegedly, the TikTok Book Club...
Deborah Yaffe
Jan 4, 2024
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