Stephanie Cowell is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet. This article is an Editors' Choice, originally published on Aug 13, 2015 And so it remains in people’s minds many years after the world it celebrated has changed forever. Mostly they are the story of how one woman loved English literature so much that she made an ordinary Charing Cross antiquarian bookshop into one of the most loved bookshops in the world ever. The original edition of the book of letters She wrote me a lovely handwritten letter back which lies buried in one of the many boxes of papers or I would hope to scan it for this article.

It was not an antiquarian book but a used paperback, but still I love it.Ī few years before I had written Helene Hanff a fan letter she still lived in the Manhattan apartment house whose address was listed in her books. It was very sad, but there were still a number of second-hand bookshops on the street, and I bought a book in one which I still have today. At that point, the shop was empty and there was nothing but the plaque commemorating it (see above) and the book Helene had written about it. In 1997 my husband and I made our own pilgrimage to 84, Charing Cross Road. ….It’s dim inside, and you smell the shop before you see it it’s a lovely smell….it combines must and dust and age, and walls of wood and floors of wood…the shelves go on forever they go up to the ceiling….” Instead her best friend went and wrote back to her: “It is the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens you would go absolutely out of your mind over it. The bookshop staff wanted her to visit, but Helene could not afford to go. Helene Hanff,who fell in love with an English bookshopīut she was a writer and writers are often poor.

Through the mail, Helene Hanff wrote, “I enclose $4 to cover the $3.88 due you, buy yourself a cup of coffee with the 12 cents…Now, do you have….” And back came more estate-quality editions so beautiful she hardly dared read them. In England Lyons Tea Shops were all over, and Elizabeth would not ascend the throne for three more years. Yes, there really was a world when you could order anything and the seller did not doubt you would pay for it. The invoice would be enclosed with the books. saying they had copies of a few things on her list and would send them book mail. Back came a letter from one FPD (Frank Doel) for Marks & Co. She sent the bookshop a list of what she wanted. She wanted a number of classic books, then only available in old editions the great cheap reprints of today had not yet been envisioned. In New York 1949, in the years not long following the terrible losses in the world from the War, a young writer who had never gone to college sent a letter to a bookshop called Marks and Co.

84 charing street