Deborah YaffeSep 19Love among the stacksIs Jane Austen a romance novelist? Discuss. Or, if you’re not interested in revisiting your test-taking days, you could just travel to...
Deborah YaffeJun 6Acquired tasteMansfield Park’s status as the most polarizing of Jane Austen’s novels is by now well-established. It’s the black-olives-and-anchovy...
Deborah YaffeMay 9Growth spurtBack in the 2010s, when I first started reading Jane Austen fanfic, the typical example of the genre was a romance novel, either Regency...
Deborah YaffeMar 21On this day in 1814. . . Ninety-second in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about Jane...
Deborah YaffeJan 8Headline magicIf you read the UK media, you might be forgiven for thinking that no story about British real estate is complete without a link to Jane...
Deborah YaffeOct 9, 2023Interview of a lifetime?I knew it! Jane Austen loves me! “Kindred spirits, indeed!” the author, dead since 1817, told me last week. “Our friendship would have...
Deborah YaffeOct 9, 2023Jane Austen speaks . . . sort ofOn October 3, I conducted a Facebook Messenger chat with Jane Austen, or at least with the AI named after her--one of twenty-eight AI...
Deborah YaffeJun 22, 2023Text and subtextThese days, some thirty years after the literary critic Edward Said first offered a post-colonial reading of Mansfield Park, the idea...
Deborah YaffeJan 12, 2023Alumni reunionsOver the holidays, my family settled in for a screening of that sublime romcom Notting Hill. When the movie ended (“I’m just a girl,...
Deborah YaffeJan 5, 2023A Janeite's Janeite passes onEdith Lank, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of ninety-six, was a Janeite’s Janeite. She read and reread Austen’s novels; began...
Deborah YaffeNov 17, 2022Not so timelessAs regular blog readers know, among my favorite pastimes is mocking the internet for its habit of attributing quotations from screen...
Deborah YaffeOct 31, 2022Scary monstersHappy Halloween, Janeites! Although Austen wrote no scenes of trick-or-treating, pumpkin-carving, or gorging on candy corn, she certainly...