Pemberley-at-sea
Although Jane Austen never set sail, her ties to seafaring, forged through the experiences of her two sailor brothers, were close and...
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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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Deborah Yaffe
Mar 28
Lady Susan on tour
With their witty dialogue and streamlined storytelling, Jane Austen’s novels have many of the qualities of the best plays. No wonder they...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 15
Taking liberties
In 2021, London theatergoers got a Pride and Prejudice with interpolated pop songs and an all-female cast. In 2022, they got a...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 6, 2023
P&P down on the farm
Earlier this year, the off-Broadway 59E59 Theaters hosted a one-man show about the afterlife of Pride and Prejudice’s villainous Mr....
Deborah Yaffe
Jun 22, 2023
Text and subtext
These days, some thirty years after the literary critic Edward Said first offered a post-colonial reading of Mansfield Park, the idea...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 15, 2022
High-camp Jane Austen
After a year that brought not one but two same-sex updates of Pride and Prejudice, we probably don’t need further proof that the queering...
Deborah Yaffe
May 2, 2022
Killing Mr. Darcy
You’ve heard it before: Modern men can’t measure up to Jane Austen’s heroes. Straight, female Janeites are hooked on impossible...
Deborah Yaffe
Feb 14, 2022
Persuasion, with soap
As Valentine’s Day dawns, all across the Netflix-speaking Janeite world, we are waiting impatiently for the new film adaptation of Jane...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 31, 2020
Goodbye at last, 2020
A year ago, I confidently predicted a 2020 filled with the usual array of Austen events: “Teas, balls, fairs, festivals, conferences,...
Deborah Yaffe
Dec 24, 2020
New Year's present
On March 2, I reported the happy news that a theatrical adaptation of Emma – written by Kate Hamill, the actor/playwright whose madcap...
Deborah Yaffe
Sep 2, 2020
Zooming Mr. Darcy
Dispiriting as the last six months have been, Janeites have encountered some notable silver linings in the gloomy cloud cover. We’ve been...
Deborah Yaffe
Jul 5, 2020
The Watsons, reborn
Among the Janeite casualties of pandemic lockdown was the planned West End production of The Watsons, Laura Wade’s much-praised...
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