Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road: A Love Letter

Today is the 75th anniversary of my favourite letter in this volume, Helene Hanff’s flurry of correspondence with a London bookseller over a couple of decades. Probably better known for the film adaptation starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, it is a lovely little book. Practically perfect.

Hanff was a screenplay reader and sometime writer, living alone on the Upper East Side when she began ordering books from post-war London, where rationing meant that eggs and meat were coveted. She built up a warm epistolary relationship with Frank Doel, of the used and rare bookstore Marks & Co. Hanff then expanded her circle of acquaintance to include Doel’s colleagues, who were soon urging her to visit London and stay with their parents. Not at all British standoffish-ness.

While the gifts of hams and eggs certainly helped along the cordial relationships that Hanff fostered, it seems to have been her prose style and humour that captured the hearts of the bookstore employees. She was rarely peremptory, instead coaxing and encouraging Doel to locate attractive editions of the books she sought.

Occasionally he would disappoint, sending the wrong version or translation. More frequently, he delighted Hanff with the store’s offerings, including some first editions. But here’s my favourite letter, dated March 25 of 1950, from Hanff to Doel:

“Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND.

Where is Leigh Hunt? Where is the Oxford Verse? Where is the Vulgate and dear goofy John Henry, I thought they’d be such nice uplifting reading for Lent and NOTHING do you send me.

you leave me sitting here writing long margin notes in library books that don’t belong to me, some day they’ll find out i did it and take my library card away.”

She goes on to note that with the advent of spring, she requires a book of love poetry, “Not Keats or Shelley.” (Hanff’s underlining, notably.) This is a book to charm someone you’re falling hard for; if they don’t appreciate it, move on.