William Shakespeare | DeborahYaffe.com

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

Dec 29, 2022

Dinner time

A common Janeite fantasy goes like this: You meet Jane Austen. Naturally, she finds you interesting and delightful. You get her take on,...

Deborah Yaffe

Jul 4, 2022

The computer-generated Jane Austen

It’s Independence Day here in the United States. What better occasion to consider the question of how soon our computer overlords will...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 24, 2022

Pride and penitentiary

The white supremacist sympathizer assigned to read Pride and Prejudice will now have enough time to get through all six of Jane Austen’s...

Deborah Yaffe

Jan 10, 2022

Pop quiz

Back in my school days, we eager young grade-grubbers used to trade advice on which teachers marked harshly and which were more...

Deborah Yaffe

Dec 9, 2021

Crunch time

Kids! Always leaving their homework to the last minute! Last summer, as blog readers will recall, a British judge sentenced a young man...

Deborah Yaffe

Sep 6, 2021

Required reading

Last week, a British judge imposed an unusual sentence on a young man convicted of possessing terrorism-related materials. "Have you read...

Deborah Yaffe

Mar 25, 2020

Jane in the time of coronavirus

For Austen fans everywhere, it’s a burning question: WWJD (What Would Jane Do) in the time of coronavirus quarantine? Luckily, we now...