In the collection's penultimate entry, Helene Hanff urges a tourist friend, "If you happen to pass by 84, Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969, the firm's secretary informed her that Frank Doel had died. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career.
THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin. When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic-but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. Many years later, Hanff did finally go to London and meet Doel’s family, the events of which are described in Hanff’s book The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover. Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916April 9, 1997) was an American writer. For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence.
84, Charing Cross Road is a charming record of bibliophilia, cultural difference, and imaginative sympathy.
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