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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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Reading Jane Austen in a vacuum
We Janeites never tire of pointing out all the qualities that make Austen special. We’re not wrong to do so--few writers are as good as...
Deborah Yaffe
5 days ago
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Lab work
The Race and Regency Lab, an intriguing new scholarly project that aims to “reimagine our understandings of race” in Jane Austen’s era,...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 12, 2024
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The bad old days
How badly off were women in Jane Austen’s England? It’s a question I’ve been mulling lately, amid a spate of recent commentary asserting...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 8, 2024
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Interrogating an interrogation
Among my many Janeite pet peeves is the caricaturing of Austen fans as prudish ultraconservatives who stick their fingers in their ears...
Deborah Yaffe
May 6, 2021
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Old issues, new questions
Five years ago, I wrote a magazine article about the controversy over Woodrow Wilson’s repugnant racial views – an aspect of the...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 11, 2021
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Dining out
I don’t know about you, but I miss dinner parties. You remember dinner parties: those occasions on which you gathered with friends –...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 20, 2020
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Reckoning with the past
By now, it’s no surprise to find Jane Austen’s name surfacing in discussions of Britain’s unsavory imperial history: The debate over the...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 16, 2020
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Companions
Thirteen years ago, when PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre aired a new adaptation of Jane Eyre, the network offered viewers a chance to buy...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 15, 2019
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Free to be. . .
On this holiday of freedom from tyranny, including the tyranny of conventional expectations, it seems appropriate to spend a moment...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 4, 2019
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Women in blue
Among London’s many delights are the blue plaques that mark buildings associated with historical personages both famous and obscure....
Deborah Yaffe
May 9, 2019
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Jane Austen's first critic
For Janeites, it’s salt rubbed in a wound: the news that scholars will soon be able to inspect a fascinating trove of letters from an...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 8, 2019
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Lucky thirteen
Name the ten most important vegetables! Quick now! Does broccoli outrank kale? How about carrots vs. turnips? Yes, yes, I know they’re...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 13, 2018
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