Sitting on a bookshelf in Vermont are four copies of ’84 Charing Cross Road’, a wonderful collection of letters exchanged between Helene Hanff, a writer in New York City and Frank Doel who worked at Marks & Co. Booksellers at the eponymous address in London.  The first letter from Hanff who lives simply in a furnished room at 14 East 95th Street in New York is dated October 5, 1949 and indicates that she had read Marks & Co.”advertisement for ‘out of print books” in the Saturday Review of Literature and was seeking “clean second hand copies of any of the books on the list for no more than $5.00 each”.   A response dated 20 days later from FPD (aka Frank Doel) indicates that of her three requests, they have sent Hazlitt’s essays and the Stevenson while the essays of Leigh Hunt will be searched for.

Thus begins a correspondence which lasted for more than 20 years, letters that are rich in literary taste and sophistication on Hanff’s part and full of British stiff upper lip formality at least initially on Frank Doel’s part.  Hanff, in the course of requesting a stunningly erudite series of volumes (Donne, Pepys, a Latin Vulgate, etc), becomes a part of the Marks & Co family sending care packages of tinned meat, eggs, and other foodstuffs unavailable or rationed in post-WWII England.  Various staff members, Doel’s wife and daughters, and even a neighbor who embroiders a linen scarf for Hanff get involved in the letter writing.  Hanff is repeatedly invited to visit England and makes several promises to do so, but alas, never gets across the pond.

The letter are witty, funny, and often quite touching as they provide an opportunity to view life in two of the world’s great cities at a time of great change.  We see the name Kennedy in a 1960 letter from Hanff and reference to the coronation of Elizabeth II in a 1952 letter from Nora Doel.  Most of all, however, it is a joy to vicariously witness this literary and personal friendship

I re-read this book every two or three years and always find something new and interesting.  I also gift the book whenever the occasion presents itself, hence the multiple copies on my shelves and the tendency I have to buy any used copy I come across.

Read this book, either to yourself or out loud to your significant other.  You won’t be disappointed.