84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff. AZW3, EPUB, MOBI

84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff. AZW3, EPUB, MOBI (1991)

Non-fiction. Tags: Books, Correspondence, Friendship, Humor, Letters.


This is a record of a love-affair between a woman and a shop. They never met, but the relationship lasted for twenty years.

The shop was Marks & Co, a London bookseller dealing in rare and secondhand books. The woman (Helene Hanff) was a merry New Yorker who didn't believe in being impersonal. She wrote letters, first to Frank Doel, the manager, then to members of his staff and his family as well; and because when the correspondence started in 1949, Britain was still enduring rationing, she sent parcels of ham, eggs, biscuits and so on. Very British and correct to start with, Frank Doel and his staff soon responded with astonished pleasure, and the resulting relationship was a delight to both sides.

The correspondence ended with Frank Doel's death, which was followed by the closing of Marks & Co. It is preserved in this book, which has made it famous: so famous that in the 1980s it was adapted for stage, TV and film.

New material in this ebook includes photographs, epilogue, reviews and obituary, but the remainder is as published in 1991.