top of page
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
Search
Plain and ornamental
In his 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen , the author’s nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, reports that his famous aunt “was successful in...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 10, 2024
0
On this day in 1808. . .
Ninety-sixth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Janeites do not always take Jane Austen at her word when it...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 7, 2024
2
What remains
Two hundred and seven years ago today, Jane Austen died in Winchester, England, at the age of forty-one. It’s easy to forget how...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 18, 2024
0
Endangered Dolphin, Part II
The moral seems clear: Bonnets are no match for the brutal imperatives of capitalism. It’s been five months since the owners of a...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 15, 2024
0
Making it up as you go along
I love the way the internet just makes stuff up. Kidding! I hate the way the internet just makes stuff up—not least when the stuff it...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 24, 2024
0
Endangered Dolphin
In December 1793, during a visit to cousins in the Hampshire city of Southampton, the soon-to-turn-eighteen-year-old Jane Austen danced...
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 20, 2024
2
Noses to the grindstone
Just three weeks after Jane Austen’s House launched its much-hyped group effort to transcribe the unpublished memoir of Austen’s older...
Deborah Yaffe
May 23, 2024
0
On this day in 1813. . .
Ninety-fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Only about two years of Jane Austen’s childhood were spent...
Deborah Yaffe
May 20, 2024
0
Too good to check
Journalists like to joke that some stories are “too good to check”: so juicily entertaining that the last thing you want is to attempt...
Deborah Yaffe
May 13, 2024
0
Written by hand
Gather ‘round, children, and let me tell you about the olden days, when elders such as myself spent long hours, in school and out,...
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 29, 2024
0
On this day in 1816. . .
Ninety-third in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water. . ....
Deborah Yaffe
Apr 1, 2024
0
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
0
bottom of page