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Literary Criticism.
Nonfiction.
This charming classic love story, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world.… (more)
sfelber: Another book about books-this time the book selling business. A fascinating read. This memoir by Wendy Werris details her life from working in a San Francisco book store as a kid to becoming an independent book rep. A true behind-the-scene view for bibliophiles.… (more)
About eight years ago, I read this epistolary memoir for a book group and absolutely loved it. Fast forward to January 2024, as I feel a book slump and low mood coming on. I came across an audio version of this wonderful short novel and think I enjoyed it even more the second time around.
New York author [author:Helene Hanff|58918], strikes up a correspondence with a Frank Doel, who works for Marks and Co, Booksellers in London. Hanff initially writes to inquire about specific used books. With her engaging and witty letters, she eventually develops a long distance friendship with not only Doel but also many of the employees who work in the bookshop. There are a lot of post WWII historical tidbits interspersed in the back and forth communications.
I was so glad to find out there is a follow-up book called The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which I intend to read. It made me happy to know that Hanff did eventually get the opportunity to visit London and meet some of the booksellers she befriended through her letters. ( )
Helene Hanff - 84, Charing Cross Road: This is a proper humor book, as well as a real 2-country slice-of-life from the 1950s-1960s. #cursorybookreviews #cursoryreviews ( )
Gentlemen: Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books.
Quotations
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 sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book. [54]
I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me. [7]
It [the Book Lover's Anthology] 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. [56]
Have you got De Tocqueville's Journey to America? Somebody borrowed mine and never gave it back. Why is it that people who wouldn't dream of stealing anything else think it's perfectly all right to steal books? [61]
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 go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: "Then it's there." [13]
This is the main work - Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road (unabridged). Please do not combine with omnibus/combined editions, anthologies or abridged editions.
The Folio Society edition contains both this work and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. UK edition titled 84 Charing Cross Road, ISBN 0860074382, 1844085244 and 1860498507, is actually an omnibus edition of this title and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Works identified as this omnibus should NOT be combined with this work, 84 Charing Cross Road.
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Original language
Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
Literary Criticism.
Nonfiction.
This charming classic love story, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world.
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▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
VIRAGO EDITION: 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 and Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.
So begins the delightfully reticent love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. For twenty years this outspoken New York writer and Frank Doel, a rather more restrained London bookseller, carry on an increasingly touching correspondence to the point where, in early December, 1949, Helene is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. Soon they are sharing more personal news about Frank's family and Hanff's career. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969 the firm's secretary informed Helene that Frank Doel had died. 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. I owe it so much.'
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1916: Helene Hanff - Resources and General Discussion
Wikipedia in English (1)
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The author, erudite and offering intriguing advice, can also be annoying. (