如果你们恰好路过查令十字街84号，请代我献上一吻，我亏欠它良多……

If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road,kiss it for me! I owe it so much.

——Helene Hanff

Introduction

84, Charing Cross Road, published in 1970, is constructed from a collection of correspondence between the author and a London bookseller, Frank Doel. The relationship began as Hanff delved into the work of a professor at Cambridge University. Professor ‘‘Q,’’ as he is called, became the catalyst for Hanff’s letter writing. Her admiration for the professor fueled her pursuit of classic literature, resulting in the inquiries comprising this work. 84, Charing Cross Road spans a twenty-year period, incidentally chronicling events abroad, such as Winston Churchill’s 1951 election in London and the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination in 1960.

This story thematically touches on the ideas of lack and sufficiency, whether it be Helene’s bibliomania (obsession for books) or a black-market trade of eggs for a pair of pantyhose in London. It is a story of beginnings and endings as represented by each letter, from date to signature. The power of language figures prominently, presenting the challenge of inference in the white space of the text as Helene waits breathlessly for her next letter to arrive. Finally, it is a story of appearances for exactly the same reason: the only information the reader has is based on a series of letters, hardly the means by which one can accurately infer much about the characters. Despite what seem to be shortcomings, the appeal of this mysterious plot is what serves to entice and delight the reader’s imagination.

Author Biography

Helene Hanff was born April 15, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although she attended Temple University for one year, she did not pursue a degree.

Critics attribute the bulk of her literary background to her penchant for books. In her work entitled Q's Legacy, she speaks of the professor whose reading recommendations became the foundation for her literary education. A self-taught classicist, Hanff was a screenwriter and author. She was first employed as a manuscript reader for Paramount Pictures, and then accepted a position as a television scriptwriter for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

The author's work is largely comprised of publications for children and young adults, constituting a collection of historical works for a young audience. However, she is perhaps most recognized for her work addressing adult audiences. 84, Charing Cross Road is her greatest achievement in this regard, in terms of the notoriety she.....

Plot Summary

Miss Hanff first wrote to the Marks bookshop in London in 1949, seeking out-of-print titles. It was the beginning of a 20-year correspondence with its manager, Frank Doel. When she finally compiled their letters in a book she was in her fifties and at a low ebb, her scripts and plays rejected. One rejection slip arrived in the same post which told her Doel was dead. In 1971 the book was published, captivating readers, and then a successful film, starring Anne Bancroft in Helene Hanff's character and Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel.

By the time she arrived in London to publicise her book, the shop had closed. She climbed its stairs and looked at the empty shelves and said out loud, "Frank, I finally made it." She hoped he heard, she said later. Michael Reddington, who produced the stage adaptation of the book, said: "She was opinionated and strong, like the character in the book. Her book is unique."

Comments

SOMETIMES I think if book lovers around the world know why and how they love books, it's because of Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road. It was the first entry in a genre that is now called Books About Books. Before 84, there were small essays on browsing for books in old bookshops in various anthologies but this was the first book that recorded — wittily, affectionately and accurately — what books really meant to a passionate reader. 84 is also about our almost sacred love for second-hand books and bookshops. Hanff spoke for book lovers everywhere when she wrote: "I do love second-hand books that open to the page some previous owner has read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to `I hate to read new books', and I hollered `Comrade!' to whoever opened it before me." Elsewhere in the book she says: "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."

First published in 1971 as a slim, elegant volume of 86 letters (from 1949-1969), 84 is the account of a New York bibliophile's love affair with an antiquarian bookshop in London.

14 East 95th St.

New York City

October 5, 1949

Marks & Co.

84, Charing Cross Road

London . W.C.2

England

Gentleman:

Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books... 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.

I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order and send them to me?

Very truly yours,

Helene Hanff

* * *

Marks &Co, Booksellers

25th October, 1949

Dear Madam,

In reply to your letter of October 5th, we have managed to clear up two thirds of your problem. The three Hazlitt essays you want are contained in the Nonesuch Press edition... we haven't the Latin Bible you describe but we have a Latin New Testament, also a Greek New Testament, ordinary modern editions in cloth binding. Would you like these?

Your faithfully.

FPD

For Marks &CO.

The second hand shop itself is described as "the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens... the shelves go on forever. They go up to the ceiling and they're very old and kind of grey, like old oak that has absorbed so much dust over the years they no longer are their true colour." The passages in the book that resonate most are when Hanff is talking of the physical pleasure of possessing books. "The book arrived safely, the Stevenson is so fine it embarrasses my orange-crate bookshelves, I'm almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream coloured pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch." 84 Charing Cross Road was subsequently made into a hit play and then a successful movie in 1986, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. It proved you can make a movie out of a bunch of letters. The film had the tricky job of having to keep the contents of the letters (they are the plot) and dramatise it. Scriptwriter Hugh Witemoore and director David Jones solve this by having Helene Hanff read her letters aloud as she types them. From the bookshop end, Frank Doel replies even as he busies himself hunting for the books on the shelf. Later, the film drops this altogether and has them talking directly to each other as they face the camera, as though they were addressing each other through us, the audience. Both Bancroft and Hopkins are perfect for the part and the supporting cast of unknown English actors who fill up the Marks &Co bookshop are a delight, too.

Anne Bancroft bangs away at her typewriter, looking up occasionally into the camera and saying things like: "he has a first edition of Newman's Idea of a University for six bucks, do I want it, he asks innocently. Yes I want it. I won't be fit to live with myself. I've never cared about first editions per se, but a first edition of THAT book — ! and "Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND. Where is Leigh Hunt? Where is the Oxford Verse? I require a book of love poems with spring coming on. No Keats or Shelly, send me poets who can make love without slobbering ... just a nice book preferably small enough to stick in a slacks pocket and take to Central Park. Well don't just sit there! I swear I don't know how that shop keeps going."

Anthony Hopkins on the other end stands still, gazing not into the camera but through it, replying: "The truth is that I have been chasing round the country in and out of various stately homes of England trying to buy a few books to fill up our sadly depleted stock... I remember you asked me for a volume of Elizabethan poems some time ago — well, this is the nearest I can get to it."

Our love of books, Hanff seems to be saying, creates community — an invisible community that we can nevertheless feel part of. Also, books are community. Hanff once remarks to her friend, pointing to her shelves, that she feels all these lovely old books she has been collecting should belong in some posh English manor and her friend says: "If I were these books, I'd want to belong right here."

Charing Cross

Charing Cross is located at the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street in Central London, England. The name originates from the Eleanor cross put there by King Edward I as as a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile at the former hamlet of Charing. Since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. That original position of the cross is recognised by modern convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other previous measurement points (such as St. Paul's Cathedral which remains as the root of the English and Welsh part of the Great Britain road numbering scheme). Charing Cross is marked on contemporary maps as a road junction, though it was previously also a postal address denoting the stretch of road between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated as part of the Whitehall thoroughfare.

Charing Cross was opened in 1864 and was the product of the Southern Eastern Railway's need to extend westward from London Bridge to get its passengers from Kent right into the heart of London.
Now, over 37 million people pass through Charing Cross every year. Situated on the forecourt of the stations is the Eleanor Cross, from which point road distances from London are measured. Queen Eleanor was the wife of Edward 1 and the cross is one of many erected at points on the journey where her body was rested on its way from Lincoln to Westminster for burial.

The Booksellers Mark & Co. were on this site which became world renowned through the book by Helene Hanff

All mankind is one volume

  "All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is torn out of the book and translated into a better language. And every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another."(John Donne)