Gradually the distant ‘FDP’ who first signed Marks & Co.’s letters emerged as ‘Frank Doel’, and eventually simply ‘Love Frank’. She enclosed a list of her ‘most pressing problems’, one of which was a Latin Bible. Marks & Co.’s polite but formal reply regretted they were unable to supply the particular volume she described, but enquired if she would like them to send ‘a Latin New Testament, also a Greek New Testament, ordinary modern editions in cloth binding’.Īfter a while, however, letters between the feisty, eccentric writer and the staff of the bookshop began to encompass much more than books. Miss Hanff described herself as ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books’ which she was unable to satisfy as ‘all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or grimy, marked-up school copies’. It was not the kind of letter they were accustomed to receiving, and it was one that would make history. In the drab and traumatized post-war London of 1949, Marks & Co., second-hand and antiquarian booksellers at 84, Charing Cross Road, received an enquiry from a Miss Helene Hanff of New York City. These sturdy little books, bound in duck-egg blue cloth, come in the same neat pocket format as the original SF Editions. We are delighted to let you know that 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff is now available as a cloth-bound hardback Plain Foxed Edition. The account of a friendship – almost a love story – conducted through books.
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