84 Charing Cross Road
A TRUE STORY THAT HAS TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF THOUSANDS
'Unmitigated delight from cover to cover' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'A real-life love story . . . A timeless period piece. Do read it' WALL STREET JOURNAL
'Beguile an hour of your time and put you in tune with mankind' NEW YORK TIMES
This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. 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 will grab your heart and not let go.
Helene Hanff (1916-1997) was an American writer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is best known as the author of the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a play, teleplay and film of the same name.
Her career, which saw her move from writing unproduced plays to helping create some of the earliest television dramas to becoming a kind of professional New Yorker, goes far beyond the charm of that one book. She called her 1961 memoir Underfoot in Show Business, and it chronicled the struggle of an ambitious young playwright to make it in the world of New York theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. She wrote letters all her life as well as being the author of many books for children.