User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
"If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much."This was my second reading of the book, and I'm adding a star to my original rating. I laughed a lot harder this time, and even got a little choked up near the end. I don't recall this much chortling, cackling, guffawing and snorting on my first time through. The contrast between Helene Hanff's brash American informality and Frank Doel's staid British professionalism is delightful. There's a certain charm in his politeness, while at the same time one wonders how long it will take for him to loosen up. His first letter to Helene begins
"Dear Madam", to which she replies:
"I hope 'madam' doesn't mean over there what it does here." Her humor and generosity did slowly erode his reserve, but it took years. As she put it:
"I write them the most outrageous letters from a safe 3,000 miles away."Outrageous they are, and charmingly witty.
I remember when e-mail first started to take hold in the early 1990s. I was working for a professor who mentioned to me that it was ahistorical. We would henceforth have no permanent record of most of our written communication. His comments stayed in my mind while I happily made the switch from snail mail to electronic. Re-reading this little treasury of collected letters made me think perhaps we've lost more than just an outdated form of contact.
Rating: really liked it
As a child, I loved writing to pen pals. Anywhere I went that offered a chance to sign up to be a pen pal, I did with earnest. None of the pen pals ended up amounting to much, but it was thrilling to receive letters from them in the mail. I come from a line of pen pal writers as my mother wrote to an English girl her age for her entire childhood and teenaged years. It is not surprising then, that I one of the first books I reviewed on goodreads was Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks, where Brooks details her own experiences with pen pals, one that eventually lead her to move to the United States and a career in writing. It comes of less of a surprise that I would be lead to 84, Charing Cross Road, a short book of correspondence by former television writer Helene Hanff. A proclaimed Anglophile who wrote to employees of the Marks and Company Book Shop in London over a twenty year period, Hanff published her letters in book form as a gift to future readers and letter writers.
Helene Hanff is enamored by out of print, hard to find British literature. The only location close to her where she is able to obtain any just to look at is at the main branch of the New York City Public Library. Yet, that library is 50 blocks from her home and most of the time she is unable to bring the books she finds back to her apartment. The books she can read are new and do not have a history behind them. By chance, Hanff's upstairs neighbors are British, and they give her the name of Marks and Co. Starting in 1949, Hanff begins writing to Marks' employees requesting new or slightly used second hand copies of all things British, everything from Chaucer to Austen and all rare books in between. While Hanff has got to pay for the air mail and shipping fees, she is happy to do so as it opens a new world of books to her. What started as an enquiry becomes a twenty year correspondence with employees at the shop.
The main pen pal Hanff wrote to was an employee named Frank Doel. In time, she also wrote to his wife and neighbor as well as other employees at Marks and Company. At first they referred to each other by names of ma'am and sir, but gradually they grew to use familiar names Helene and Frank. Engaging in intelligent conversations about books and about their lives, Hanff became emotionally invested in the lives of the Marks and Company family. Each year she would send the staff gifts of hard to find rationed items as meats, eggs, sugar, and nylon stockings. For this, they were forever grateful, going out of their way to send Hanff any book she requested, even an extremely rare copy of the Complete Works of John Donne. While money did not allow her to travel, Hanff had an open invitation to visit London and stay as a guest of any of the shop employees. What had started as a simple letter morphed into a lifelong friendship.
The correspondence that Helene Hanff engaged in seemed as a precursor to goodreads as she discussed books with otherwise strangers on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Finding like minded readers from all over the world is one of the things I enjoy the most about goodreads, so I was drawn to Hanff and her quest to obtain British literature. Even though she was unable to visit London, Hanff's sincere writing left me with a smile as I envisioned her thrill of opening the letters and packages that emerged from a simple correspondence. With the majority of correspondence now done electronically, letter writing has become a lost art. Hanff's letters to Doel took me back to a simpler time, and that their relationship centered on books was only an added bonus.
4+ stars
Rating: really liked it
84, Charing Cross Road is a book which contains selected correspondence between a New York book lover in New York City (Helene Hanff) and a used bookseller in London (Frank Doel). The correspondence starts in 1949 and lasts for 20 years.
This book started off strongly as the reader is a voyeur into the lives of Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. The love and enthusiasm that Helene Hanff oozes for literature is almost palpable and highly contagious. She also tries to help her favorite British bookstore. However, Helene refers to so many pieces of obscure literature. Many of the books I have never even heard of (although I do know William Blake and Jane Austen unfortunately). It would have been more poignant if it was referring to modern pieces of literature or at least more well-known works. Thinking back on some of my literary discussions, I found them to be more entertaining and endearing than this book.
This book did transport me back in time (alright well I wasn’t born in 1949 or even 1969), but I do remember a time when people actually took the time to sit down and write letters. They put time and thought into it, and it meant the world to hold that letter in your hand. It was a special event to receive a letter from someone. Now, we have email where you get adverts from a company after you purchased one bottle of nail polish. People give you a hug while checking their Smartphones. Once upon a time, there was a time when someone sat down and focused on correspondence without 26 email notifications, 385 Twitter notifications, and 16 text messages. Would Helene have been able to craft such a relationship today? Maybe she could chat with a virtual assistant.
Overall, this book is worth a read once, but I’ve encountered livelier bookish discussions on GoodReads.
2022 Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden
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Rating: really liked it
Click here to hear my thoughts on Helene Hanff, this book, and all her other books over on my Booktube channel, abookolive!
First read in November 2019. Reread on New Year's Day 2021 and loved it even more than the first time I read it! 😭❤
Rating: really liked it
The epistolary meanderings of Helene Hanff and Frank Dole are insightful, playful in their coyness, and progressive in their development. This is an actual correspondence gone awfully right.
There is a starkness of honesty in this correspondence. Yet the prose in the letters aren't quite as dry as might be feared. Like I said, the back and forth is progressive. There is definitely life in these letters.
This real occurrence happens after the second world war(the last three words of which is a favorite book of mine). The books that are being requested by Helene are not the point of this book. It's just that there is a fictional value in these exchanges. These people lived. I enjoyed this little book immensely, hence the rating.
Rating: really liked it
I often jump straight to the down and dirty of a book, but please allow me to shake things up by presenting the lithe and lovely.
- 84, Charing Cross Road is an absolutely delightful epistolary memoir made up of letters exchanged between NYC-based author Helene Hanff and an antiquarian bookseller in London.
- It was published in 1970 and contains twenty years of correspondence that began in 1949 - a time when London was still dealing with post-war rationing and, to state the obvious, the internet did not exist. If you wanted to find a rare book or first edition of a favorite, you had to hunt for it! Oh, the joy of finally locating a coveted treasure by reaching out by letter to a store across the world rather than just through the click of a mouse.
- There are no villains in this book. None at all. It’s just chock full of wonderful, bookish people being wonderful to other bookish people.
- 84, Charing Cross Road has languished on my To Read shelf since I joined Goodreads back in 2014. Now that I’ve finally gotten to it, the lump in my throat and the smile on my face have moved it straight to the top of my All Time Favorites.
84 stars for this loveliest of lovely reads.
Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/
Rating: really liked it
I’ve wanted to read this little book since I first read its name and the synopsis. It is a story of a friendship, a sweet little collection of letters between an American script writer and the employees of a London secondhand bookstore. Since I first set foot on London soil in 2005, I’ve been visiting the second hand bookstores (one in particular) from Charing Cross Road almost every year. I have to admit that I felt a bit of nostalgia while reading.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society opened my appetite for epistolary novels (I loved, loved, that one) and I thought this will be quite similar. And it was, up to a point.
Both are set in the aftermath of the 2nd World War which was an interesting background in both books. I did not know that everything was rationalized in Britain for quite a few years after the War. In 86 Charing Cross Road there is a lot of talk about that and the presents the American writer sends to London. It was emotional at the beginning but it became boring and repetitive.
One of the main differences between the two books is that one is a fictional love story the other is a collection of a real correspondence so there was not much space of imagination. Still, I have to thank this little book for getting me out of a deep reading slump.
Another reason I do not give more stars, is that the books mentioned in the letters are totally unknown to me. They are mainly memoirs, poems and non-fiction classics that I’ve
never read. The only titles I knew were Pride and Prejudice and the Canterbury Tales.
All in all, it was worth the read as it takes less than two hours and it made me feel good
Rating: really liked it
It’s about time I finally cracked this charming little book open. I’ve had it sitting on the nightstand for nearly a decade. A tribute to bookstores, booklovers, and England, this epistolary novel delivered exactly what I expected it to! If Goodreads hadn’t already confirmed what I suspected, namely that I’m not the only soul in the world with a book reading and book collecting obsession, then Helene Hanff’s experience would have offered the proof I needed. Her letters written from a small apartment in New York City to Frank, a used bookshop dealer in London, were a pleasure to read.
“’You and your Olde English books!’ You see how it is, Frankie, you’re the only soul alive who understands me.”Likely, you won’t be surprised to learn that secondhand bookstores are one of my most treasured places on earth to visit. Immediately after checking into a hotel in whatever town or city I’ve landed, I will set the suitcase down, connect to the WiFi, and search the internet for restaurants and local used bookshops. I don’t usually show up with a plan in mind, but instead spend hours scouring the shelves for special finds. I love thinking about all the other readers that have previously held these books in their hands. Did they like the book but not well enough to keep it at home on that favorites shelf? Did he or she pass away years before and not have a book-loving friend or relative to hand the books down to? Or maybe this fellow bookworm simply ran out of space or packed up, moved, and decided to share a beloved book with some stranger in the future that will connect to him or her by some invisible thread.
“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.”I’m pleased to finally say I can move this book from the nightstand to the “keepers” shelf. I’m just a bit sorry that it ended all too soon. I could have kept reading about Helene and Frank for days yet. This little gem also serves as a reminder to not put off until tomorrow what you’d love to do today. Time is shorter than we imagine, and the people we wish to meet and the places we yearn to visit are waiting for us. The time is now!
“Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul’s where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they are looking for. I told him I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he said ‘Then it’s there.’”
Rating: really liked it
Letters, literature, friendships, kindness and humor fill the pages of this small volume. It's a gift from Helene Hanff to anyone who loves books. Not much more I can say except that all book lovers should read it .
Long distance friendships and books - a lot like Goodreads .
Rating: really liked it
Interestingly, I have just read two books in a row for my 1970s reading project that were
published in the 1970s, but took place at an earlier time. It feels, to me, a little bit like cheating, but they
were popular books in the 70s, regardless, so here I am, reviewing another one (accidentally).
And, fittingly, this non-fiction story, compiled like an epistolary novel, reminded me of a memory I have from the early-mid 1980s, so let me misbehave, for a moment, and cheat on my beloved 70s with another decade.
This book reminded me of a period of time in my life when I was babysitting, every Saturday night, for a gorgeous college professor and her husband (old what's-his-name). I was a young teen, and, after the kids would go to bed, I'd pull a book down from their fabulous home library, put on some soft porn from HBO in the background (this house is the setting for another review of mine: Wise Blood ) and then creep into their kitchen for my one weekly indulgence: an Entenmann's chocolate doughnut.
Back at my own house, my mother was a combination of Twiggy mixed with Jane Fonda and we had fat-free bodies and a sugar-free household for all of the 1970s and 1980s. (And then therapy for the next 20 years).
So. . . around 10pm every Saturday night for about two years, I would defy our household rules (because I wasn't home, duh), and I would take one perfectly formed chocolate doughnut and hold it out before me like the Holy Grail, then place it reverently on one perfectly formed white napkin and appreciate the yin/yang duality of my life before tearing into that treat in the den like a barnyard animal.
The sugar and fat would rush my senses while inappropriate scenes from movies like “Porky's” played on in the background and I would discover my next precious read.
Remembering those Saturday nights fills me with nostalgia. I had no idea I was having that much fun at the time, but I know it now.
Sometimes we don't know how special something is, until it's over. We hope, when we remember, that we have visuals, letters. We hope that someone else remembers, too.
Rating: really liked it
I've always adored this movie so I decided to listen to the short audio. It was such a delight!
A book that was originally published in 1970 about a twenty year letter correspondence (1949-1969) that turned into a sweet friendship.
Helene Hanff lives in New York City and is a writer and lover of old, out of print books. She contacts Marks & Co. an antique bookshop in London about a book she is looking for. The head buyer, Frank Doel responds and sends her the book. They begin to correspond and Helene orders more books and they also begin to talk about their lives. As the years go by Frank's wife also writes to Helene as well as some other staff members from Marks & Co. There are some sweet and cheeky exchanges.
A treasure of a story when long ago letter writing existed and two perfect strangers bonded and formed a beautiful friendship 💌
Rating: really liked it
There is something about a letter correspondence between two book lovers that
never gets old. My heart, wistfully content and overflowing upon reading
84, Charing Cross Road, testifies to this.
Texting and emailing these days - it is just different, isn't it? The corporate, capitalistic, hypertech world we live in has, in some respects, sucked aliveness out of the things it promises to enhance: networking and uninterrupted presence.
This is not to say that Hanff's letter assemblage necessarily makes for a nostalgic flashback to an obliterated past that tends towards a wishful recovery of it. But it does stir a very human longing for a simple bond of friendship sustained notwithstanding the 50s-60s perception of distance (New York / London).
A distance that is not merely geographical but also temperamental. Because Helene Hanff and Frank Doel could not be more different if they tried. Helen is a writer who has to constantly wait on commissioned work to make ends meet, in this not very different from Frank Doel, her chief correspondent and bookseller at Marks & Co. on Charing Cross Road. Quintessential quirkiness on the one hand, self-contained British reserve on the other, the two wonderfully maintain contact from year to year, usually initiated by some peculiar book request on Helene's part, or Frank's responses to her old requests. It is, therefore, their variously manifested life passion for rare books that nourishes communication between them. Except that, in time, they warm up to each others' ways, and come to delight in the correspondence, to some extent participating in each others' lives.
Helene's plan to visit England never quite materialises, but others from London (Frank's wife and colleagues amongst others) cannot resist getting in touch with her from time to time. Because Helene is also extremely generous and vibrant. Opinionated, no doubt, but so candid and likeable. And, of course, she likes to affectionately taunt Frank, who is not as uptight as one would be apt to think and reciprocates with care and attention.
I certainly kept wanting to read more of her whimsical letters, much like her correspondents. It did sadden me somewhat to think about their long intervals of silence, and yet each letter comes across as the rightful continuation to its former counterparts. The mark of true friendship.
4 stars. Highly recommended to all readers.
Rating: really liked it
I lived in London from 2004 to 2008 and still have a house there. I continue to travel to London regularly from Dubai. I call these trips my "sanity check"; they transport me from my 'dream' world back to the 'real' world.
One of my favourite haunts in London is Charing Cross Road. It's been the home to booksellers selling second-hand and rare books for decades. Long before the American writer Helene Hanff immortalised the street in 84 Charing Cross Road, the area enjoyed a storied association with the city’s literary scene and its accompanying book trade. In its 1950s heyday, denizens of the nearby drinking dens of Soho, from Dylan Thomas to Auberon Waugh, would stagger from shop to shop, scanning the heaving shelves.
One of those shops was Marks & Co., the subject of this review, a well-known antiquarian bookseller located at Cambridge Circus - 84 Charing Cross Road, London. The shop was founded in the 1920s by Benjamin Marks and Mark Cohen. Cohen was persuaded to allow his name to be abbreviated in the company's name. The company built a good reputation for itself and had famous customers, including Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, Michael Foot, royalty and public institutions such as universities and the British Museum.
- Marks & Co., 84 Charing Cross RoadMarks & Co. used to advertise its goods in various newspapers, magazines, journals etc. On Oct 5, 1949, a Miss Helene Hanff, from New York City, USA saw their ad in the Saturday Review of Literature. She wrote them a letter:
"Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian book-sellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up school-boy copies.
I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?"
Her letter was responded to by an employee of Marks & Co. with the initials FPD, who we later learn is Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co.. And so the epistolary novel of 84 Charing Cross Road begins. For 20 years Helene maintains correspondence with Marks & Co., and particulalry with Frank.
During the time of their exchange, Britain was experiencing food rationing. Every man, woman and child was given a ration book with coupons. These were required before rationed goods could be purchased. Basic foodstuffs such as sugar, meat, fats, bacon and cheese were directly rationed by an allowance of coupons. Priority allowances of milk and eggs were given to those most in need - children, expectant mothers or invalids. Housewives had to register with particular retailers. As shortages increased, long queues became commonplace.
For many years, until the end of food rationing, Helene sent the employees of Marks & Co. food parcels. Hams, tinned food of varying kinds (including tongue), boxed eggs, chocolate, raisins and so on. These parcels used to be divied up among the employees and brought such great joy and happiness to them and their families. Nylons were a favourite of the Doel household; with Frank's wife and two daughters.
I delighted in reading this novel. I simply adored Helene. I could see a lot of myself in her. With her often acerbic comments, wit, generosity, kindness, and stubborness, she could be my identical twin! :) Even her reactions to receiving her beloved books were 'me to a tee'. I do wonder if I am a reincarnate of sorts.
- Me (taken Oct 2014) and Helene - a similarity, don't you think?[As an aside, there is an enchanting exchange of letters between Helene Hanff and a fan that is refreshing to read, and demonstrates the type of woman that Helene was. http://freespace.virgin.net/angela.ga...]
I treasured the following quotes from Helene:
"I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest."
"I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to."
"The Book-Lovers' Anthology stepped out of its wrappings, all gold-embossed leather and gold-tipped pages, easily the most beautiful book I own including the Newman first edition. It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before."
"I houseclean my books every spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again like I throw out clothes I'm never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can't think of anything less sancrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book."
Helene had never been out of the USA and lived for the day when she could visit London. Frank, his wife and others, tried many times to get her to visit them, but some crisis or another, generally financial, did not afford her that luxury.
In a letter dated April 11, 1969, Helene wrote a letter to her friend, Katherine. In it she said:
"If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me! I owe it that much."
I will do that for Helene, the next time I am in London, as I'm sure thousands before me have done so, and thousands of others will do in the future.
Marks & Co. have long gone, and 84 Charing Cross Road has been many things since; a wine shop, a restaurant, to name but a few. But there is a plaque at the very spot in memory of the store. There is also a plaque in the US, at Charing Cross House, 305 East 72nd Street, New York, where Helene Hanff once lived.
- Plaques in the UK and USThis afternoon I read the reviews of this book by GR friends. They were all wonderful and expressed how I felt about the letters between Helene and Frank. One friend's review though, Trevor's, was especially poignant and moved me to conclude this review with his thoughts:
If you needed to be reminded that love of literature is as good a foundation of love of the world as any other 'religion', that the people we write to can be closer and dearer to us than those we see day after day - then this really is a book written to remind you of just that.- GR friend: TrevorAmen to that.
Rating: really liked it
"84, Charing Cross Road" by Helene Hanff is an Epistolary Historical Non-Fiction treasure!
Letters exchanged between writer Helene Hanff and bookseller Frank Doel (rhymes with 'Noel' just in case you were curious!) She lived in New York City and was a lover of old out-of-print books. He lived and worked in London as an antiquarian at MARKS & CO. at 84, Charing Cross Road.
A book containing nothing other than letters that traveled back and forth across the pond started in 1949 and continued for 20 years. It began with a mutual love of old books, gradually blossoming into a true friendship between Helene and Frank. It also branched out to include the employees in the bookstore, Frank's wife, and, eventually, their children. Helene's acts of kindness through the post-war years, I believe to be the catalyst of this inclusion!
I read this book while on our 2021 Fall Getaway. I intentionally savored it, reading only a few pages a day. Some days I would backtrack and revisit previous pages before moving on. I wanted it to last the entire trip. I didn't want this glimpse of the past to end.
This book brought back memories of watching Mom receiving a letter from someone dear and how relationships were solidified and enriched by this type of correspondence. A letter was always the best way to nudge Mom for attention! I miss those days...
If it sounds like this short ninety-seven page read may interest you, I hope it stirs the same deep emotions in you that it stirred in me! I highly recommend.
Thanks to Knox County Library System for lending this treasure to me!
Published in 1970, Ms. Hanff dedicated this book to Frank Doel.
Rating: really liked it
An easy 5 stars!
I listened to this lovely short audiobook. It's completely charming. The voices are perfect. And in an odd way it reminded me of what I love about Goodreads. Strangers connecting over their mutual love of books. Slowly the book focused repartee morphs into a real sense of affinity and frienship.
A bit of warmth to ease the dark cold days of November. A nice relief from the miserable state of world politics.
I'm late to this party, but I highly recommend it -- especially the audio.
