Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14692 in Books
• Published on: 1982-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Good Book Guide
`A lovely new edition of this classic title'

Daily Express
`A must for anyone who reads - the correspondence between book lover Helen Hanff and Messers Marks & Cross of Charing Cross Road has been reissued.'

Bournemouth Daily Echo
`Two books in one … both showcase Helene's biting wit, loving nature and her keen eye for the eccentricities of English life we residents take for granted.'

Customer Reviews

in haste...
buy this book, it warms your heart. i am amazed it escaped my grasp for so long. sure, it's twee, there's no angst or attitude, politics or grit. amen, to that. it's a simple story about civilised people in a by-gone age, and it's true. i have since stalked the long closed bookshop. perhaps better to sit in a bloomsbury square and long for times past...

If you love books - you'll love 84 Charing Cross Road
This has become a favourite book for me. Told with such poignant charm, through the letters and other communications from the time. Even those letters which are obviously missing, lost through the passage of time - tell their own story. Helene's long distance friendship with Frank Doel, and others he worked with at that now famous address is a bittersweet one, and one which will remain with the reader long afterwards. Helene's love of books is infectious - and this book is therefore a must for anyone who feels strongly about the books in their home.

Friendship with Depth and Love
In these days of e-books, and bland books constructed from franchised ideas and formulas, we are presented "84, Charing Cross Road," a story about a relationship begun because of a mutual love of old great books.

Frank Doel owns the English bookstore, and Helene Hanff mails him a request for a book. Correspondence and a relationship begins. Contently and confidently married, Doel responds as an older brother might, and the two grow to cherish each other despite the distance.

As they care for each other, and slowly, their local friends and family become aware, we see how love transcends the sea. Neither character has an agenda, and this left me feeling a little less cynical about the world around me.

Like Nick Bantock's "Griffin and Sabine," it carries a romantic mystery and intrigue. We read the correspondence and imagine.

Like so many of today's e-mail- and chatroom-only friendships, they learn to appreciate each other, though knowing only the other as they choose to describe themselves.

This isn't a story about books or bookstores, despite the honest representation of their demeanor and personality. Any booklover knows the search for a book, and the texture of a bookseller's knowledge and connection with his books.

This is a book about the depth, trust, and love of one unexpected relationship. Book lovers will enjoy the context, and good friends will smile knowingly.

The movie with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft is likewise worth viewing, carrying the letters into a emotional zone of charm and delight.