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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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Bookshelf for sale
At the back of Rebecca Romney’s new book Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a...
Deborah Yaffe
Mar 27
2
Proud as a peacock
I’m so fond of the famous “Peacock edition" of Pride and Prejudice that its glorious art nouveau cover--featuring a graceful vase, some...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 26, 2024
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Marked up
The world can be divided into two categories: People who leave their books unsullied, and people who mark them up. And if a prominent...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 7, 2023
2
Coveted rarities
As regular blog readers know, I have a not-so-secret hankering for Jane Austen first editions, along with nothing like enough money to...
Deborah Yaffe
Aug 21, 2023
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Father knows best
Although Jane Austen’s novels never commanded huge print runs – the biggest, for Emma, totaled only two thousand copies -- Austen first...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 22, 2022
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Expensive thrills
For Janeites, the Austen First Edition Thrill-o-Meter is calibrated something like this: Biggest Thrill: Austen novel first edition owned...
Deborah Yaffe
Oct 10, 2022
2
Sticker shock
Apparently, it’s not just gas and hotel rooms: Pandemic-era inflation has also hit the rare book market. Or so we learned from a recent...
Deborah Yaffe
May 19, 2022
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Pricey, and priceless
It’s always nice to know that other people value Our Jane the way we do. Like, value her in dollars. Last week, as blog readers will...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 20, 2021
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Austens with a pedigree
Owning first editions of Jane Austen’s novels – ideally, as I’ve noted before, of all Jane Austen’s novels – must be . . . pretty cool....
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 13, 2021
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Another chance at completion
Less than a year ago, a rich person with excellent taste snapped up a complete set of Jane Austen first editions at a New York auction....
Deborah Yaffe
Nov 12, 2020
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Beautiful books, glamorous provenance
When valuable editions of Jane Austen’s novels come up for auction, the selling point is usually something about the books themselves:...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 10, 2020
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Completist completes
Apparently, I’m not the only Jane Austen completist out there. Last week, as blog readers will recall, the New York auction house Swann...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 27, 2020
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