Beyond the letters between the main characters, Hanff (and Doel, in his replies) recorded the early post-WWII years on both sides of the Atlantic, through to the revolutionary late 1960s. It’s hard to put a finger on why 84, Charing Cross Road resonates with readers. MEETING OF MINDS First edition cover of Hanff’s most famous book. There was no overt romance, but there was a great and tender mutual love of English Literature – Hanff the reader, and Doel her literary scout, seeking-out affordable copies of the classics for a writer of limited means eking out an existence in New York City.Ĭompelled to document what may have felt like one of the more meaningful relationships in her life, Hanff embarked on what she thought would be a very small work. Through their two decade correspondence, Doel and Hanff had developed a unique long distance friendship. Forget that they had never met face to face. Hanff was devastated.įorget that she had never been to London.

The two had known one another since 1949. at the address made famous by the title of her book, in the city of London, England. This was bookstore manager Frank Doel of Marks & Co. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure and loneliness in her fifties, after the collapse of some long-held dreams about becoming a Broadway playwright (not to mention the four decades she spent trying), Hanff received news that one of her oldest friends had died.

“That her nature often resulted in alienation gives her story all the more pathos.”

“I’m a great lover of i-was-there books,” she wrote in her most famous work. It could be argued that Helene Hanff invented the style of writing now employed almost blindly by bloggers the world over – the confessional epistolary genre, studded with emotion, was embedded in her genes, and her unbeatable use of it was borne of her own life experience. Of all the writers I admire, I cannot think of one who deserved more to have lived long enough to write in the age of blogging. MISTRESS OF MISSIVES Helene Hanff (1916-1997) made a career of letter writing.ĬOULD there be a better proponent of written communication, a smarter wordsmith, a more ‘writerly’ writer than New York denizen, Queen of the day job, rejection letter collector, and one of the world’s biggest fans of English Literature – Helene Hanff (1916-1997), author of 84, Charing Cross Road?

Helene hanff frank doel