Deborah Yaffe

Thank you so much for reading so loyally!

Hail and farewell The first blog post I ever wrote about Jane Austen appeared here on February 4, 2013, nearly thirteen years ago. Today’s post is my 1,354th—and my last. I’m not wrapping up the blog because Jane Auste...

Saying goodbye, after nearly 13 years of #JaneAusten blogging.
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Love at Christmas Christmas barely registers in Jane Austen’s novels: Only three of them—Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion—include true Christmas-time scenes. Still, the holiday comes in for occasional mentions in t...

The delights of the season, in #JaneAusten's Northanger Abbey.
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The sound of music The Jane Austen's Desk online platform seeks crowdfunding to move the project forward in the absence of NEH funding.

Crowd-funding for an online #JaneAusten platform.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/the-sou...

Hear ye, hear ye On Tuesday, as you may have heard, we celebrated Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. Some of us, however, celebrated more officially than others: The governors of at least three U.S. states apparently signe...

Proclaiming #JaneAusten's birthday throughout the land.
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A happy birthday, for all of us No one who saw Jane Austen on the first day of her life would have supposed her born to be one of the world’s greatest novelists. Her doting father saw only “another girl, a present plaything for her ...

A momentous literary birthday! 250 years of #JaneAusten.
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Joining the club Every author dreams of having her work spotlighted by a celebrity with a book club, an online following, and a guaranteed power to pump up sales. Reese Witherspoon, anyone? Barack Obama’s annual best-...

#JaneAusten makes it onto a celebrity book club's list.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/joining...

Jane on the airwaves In her lifetime, Jane Austen may not have been as famous and revered as she deserved to be. But in death, she’s making up for lost time. Case in point: The BBC’s talk-radio programming schedule for th...

BBC radio is celebrating #JaneAusten's birthday with wall-to-wall programming.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/jane-on...

Maybe you should go and report back! 😀

Paper trail How famous is Jane Austen? Let us assess the evidence: the screen adaptations, the TikTok mentions, the T-shirts and fridge magnets and tote bags. Or we could take a trip to the Grolier Club in New Yo...

Assessing #JaneAusten's fame, in an exhibit opening today in NYC.
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Home stretch It’s here at last: The final month of this Austen 250 year—which just happens to be the very month in which we will commemorate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. As we march inexorably towards the great d...

Libraries everywhere are gearing up to celebrate #JaneAusten's birthday.
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Roasted Turkey makes an appearance in more than one of Jane Austen’s completed novels—and, it turns out, in one of the unfinished ones, as well. Given the fraught nature of Thanksgiving guest lists, perhaps i...

The immortal bird, in an unfinished #JaneAusten novel.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/roasted

Scary stuff Sixteen years ago, an up-and-coming young writer and a scrappy little Philadelphia publisher hit the jackpot with a simple recipe: 1. Take eight parts out-of-copyright text of Jane Austen’s Pride and ...

A planned new #JaneAusten adaptation is taking an . . . unusual approach.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/scary-s...

Scary stuff Sixteen years ago, an up-and-coming young writer and a scrappy little Philadelphia publisher hit the jackpot with a simple recipe: 1. Take eight parts out-of-copyright text of Jane Austen’s Pride and ...

A planned new Jane Austen adaptation is taking an . . . unusual approach.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/scary-s...

On this day in 1808. . . One hundred and fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. How many marriage proposals did Jane Austen turn down? The story of poor Harris Bigg-Wither, whose December 1802 p...

Does the backstory to a letter #JaneAusten wrote 217 years ago today include a rejected marriage proposal?
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/on-this...

Coming attractions The telltale compression of the calendar pages confirms that we are hastening toward the end of this landmark Austen 250 year. But don’t despair: With several marquee adaptations moving swiftly throug...

#JaneAusten adaptations likely coming our way in 2026.
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Home sweet Wickham? In the English county of Hampshire, some forty miles from the village where Jane Austen was born exactly 250 years ago, a new planned community is rising. Dedicated to environmental sustainability (he...

A planned community with a #JaneAusten connection--or maybe not.
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Counting down It’s fair to say that most of us apprehend Jane Austen by way of words. But for a few outliers, numbers may provide a way into her work. As we count down toward The Big Birthday next month, this week ...

Celebrating #JaneAusten's 250th, with words and numbers.
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Bottoms up Which wine pairs best with Jane Austen’s novels? As someone whose annual alcohol consumption can be measured in teaspoons, I wouldn’t know. So I was bemused to run across a recent story headlined “Enj...

Pairing #JaneAusten with the right vintage.
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I think I've seen some of those articles. Glad to hear there's reason for optimism!

Pet peeve About twenty-five minutes into Audible’s new audio adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Sir William Lucas summons Elizabeth Bennet over for a chat. “Sir Lucas! Good evening,” she greets him. That sound ...

Driving this #JaneAusten fan crazy, in an otherwise excellent adaptation of #PrideAndPrejudice.
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Pod life Does the world need another Jane Austen podcast? Color me skeptical. A rummage through Google and memory turned up eighteen non-fiction examples of the genre, and I doubt I found them all. There are p...

Ready or not, another #JaneAusten podcast is coming our way.
www.deborahyaffe.com/post/pod-life

I very much enjoyed that piece!

Going over to the dark side? British screenwriter Andrew Davies turned eighty-nine last month, but he’s not slowing down. Quite the reverse. Over the past six weeks, Davies—the author of four well-known TV adaptations of Austen n...

A screenwriter known for his #JaneAusten adaptations is planning some surprising new takes on her work.
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Playing the palace, again In life, Jane Austen’s royal connections were minimal. As Janeites will remember, the Prince Regent, later George IV, was a fan of her work. In 1815, a chance encounter scored Austen a private tour of...

Royal editions of #JaneAusten's books, on display in an actual palace.
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Unveiled at last No selfie sticks were anywhere in sight. On an overcast afternoon last week, Winchester Cathedral unveiled a life-size bronze statue of Jane Austen in its Inner Close, bringing an end to seven years o...

A controversial #JaneAusten statue is finally unveiled. www.deborahyaffe.com/post/unveile...

Listen up, Part II Jane Austen’s influence on Bridgerton is old news. If the whole feisty-Regency-heroines-in-marriage-plots thing didn’t give it away, there’s the testimony of Julia Quinn, the author of the romance nov...

A British national treasure in the latest audio version of #JaneAusten's #PrideAndPrejudice.
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Listen up No one knows how long we’ll have to wait to see the newest screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the buzzy Netflix version now filming in the UK. But the latest audio version of the novel, a four-...

Celebrating the newest #PrideAndPrejudice adaptation, in luxe style.
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TikTok's latest #JaneAusten-themed trend.
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On this day in 1808. . . One hundred and fourth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters. Jane Austen, it seems, took a rather jaundiced view of the frequent childbearing that characterized Regency marri...

#JaneAusten's jaundiced views on childbirth.
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