This is a book about books, and about the best there is of this genre. A collection of letters written over a period of twenty years, this is the correspondence between a reader and a bookseller. The reader is Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and the bookseller is Frank Doel, who worked for Marks & Co, a second-hand bookshop located at 84 Charing Cross Road, London.
Helene had an abiding love of literature, and what she described as an antiquarian taste in books. Back in 1949, when this correspondence began, she wrote that she was frustrated by the fact that the kind of books she wanted were expensive and hard to get in America. She kept borrowing books from the library and hated giving them back. Then came the day, October 15th 1949, when she came across an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature. It was an ad for Marks & Co, a second-hand book shop in London, who described themselves as antiquarian booksellers.
She wrote them a letter listing some of the books that she wanted to buy. The person who wrote back to her was Frank Doel, the principal buyer for Marks & Co. He sent her a couple of the books that she had asked for and a correspondence began. Initially, they talked about books and writers and shared a few ideas and opinions. Then they began to share details of their lives. They found that they had a similar sense of humour, and they soon became friends.
When Helene heard from another friend about post-war rationing in England, she began to send food parcels to the shop, an act of real generosity on her part, given that she was a struggling writer and didn’t have all that much herself. Everyone in the shop was immensely grateful and they each wrote letters to thank her. Soon she knew everyone who worked at the shop.
For twenty years Helene and Frank shared the ups and downs of their lives with each other. She kept making plans to go to London and finally seeing her bookshop, as she thought of it, but she never really had the money to afford the trip. Then, on a bleak January day in 1969, at what Helene describes as the lowest point in her professional life, a letter arrived from Marks & Co telling her that Frank Doel had died. It was a real blow.
Once she was done grieving, there was only one thought in her head. She had to publish her correspondence with Frank and memorialise her relationship with Marks & Co, the bookshop that had sold her so many beautiful books, and given her a link with London, a city that she had loved all her life, though she’d never actually been there.
When Helene gathered up all of her and Frank’s letters and put this book together, she was doing it for herself. She wanted to publish the correspondence that had been such an important part of her life and wanted to preserve it in a form in which she could revisit it at will. She hoped that a few other readers would enjoy it as well. She had no idea that so many people would fall so utterly and completely in love with it. She had no idea that this book would change her life.
And it did. 84 Charing Cross Road was turned into a television play by the BBC, and then a stage play that ran very successfully on London’s West End. A few years after that, Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins played Helene and Frank in the utterly charming film version of the book. Hundreds of readers from around the world wrote her fan letters. After years of barely scraping by as a writer, this was acknowledgement and recognition of the kind Helen never imagined she’d have.
What makes 84 Charing Cross Road so special is Helene herself. Her personality comes through clearly in her letters which are full of life and spirit. Frank is more measured in his writing, and he makes the perfect foil for her exuberance. Through the book, you are aware that Helene is a struggling writer and that she has a bunch of financial troubles, but it seems like nothing can faze her. She takes it all in her stride. As long she has her books, she’s happy.
84…was not a bestseller. It did not sell millions of copies. It did something better. It became a cult book. Readers all over the world fell in love with it. Even today, more than fifty years after it was first published, no list of books about books is complete without 84 Charing Cross Road.