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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

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 23, 2024

Creepy Lizzy

The newest Lizzy Bennet is a peculiar creature. True, her Regency-appropriate curls are lovely, and her dark eyes might pass for fine,...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 19, 2024

Love among the stacks

Is Jane Austen a romance novelist? Discuss. Or, if you’re not interested in revisiting your test-taking days, you could just travel to...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 16, 2024

Marital gift-giving

As a card-carrying Wife, I feel I must call my Husband’s attention to a recent feature in Town & Country magazine, “ 40 of the Best...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 12, 2024

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 9, 2024

R.I.P. Quackers

Let me say up front that I understand that the death of a beloved pet—like the death of a newborn baby --is no laughing matter. And yet,...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 5, 2024

Coming attraction

Apparently, I am not the only person who never tires of romcoms in which a Jane Austen fan’s romantic life starts to mirror Austen’s...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 2, 2024

On this day in 1814. . .

Ninety-fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen was a patriotic Briton, and during her...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 29, 2024

Sounds familiar

By now, we’ve had so many movies in which a youngish, female Jane Austen fan discovers that her modern-day romantic life is somehow mixed...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 26, 2024

The luxury of time

Summer is winding down, but there’s still time to squeeze in some vacation reading. And if you prefer that your books come in beautifully...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 22, 2024

Dr. Jane

It’s hardly news that Jane Austen’s prose comes in handy for recuperating patients: Her novels were famously prescribed to shell-shocked...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 19, 2024

Inferiority complex

In 2007, Colin Firth told the London Sunday Times that he was completely unsuited to his most famous role , which he had played twelve...

Deborah Yaffe

Aug 15, 2024

Regency fashion, off the beaten path

My husband grew up in the northwestern English city of Lancaster. It is not my favorite place. The weather is frequently dank and...