In 1949, New York writer Helene Hanff wrote a letter to Messrs Marks and Co, a London bookseller specializing in rare and secondhand books, inquiring about several titles. From that one letter evolved nearly two decades of correspondence between the witty and acerbic Hanff and restrained bookseller Frank Doel. A record of cultural difference, literary love, and deep friendship first published as a memorial to Doel in 1970, their exchanges intermingle book requests and literary musing with notes about family and career and sympathies regarding post-war hardship. At this special reading on what would have been Hanff’s 100th birthday, used book buyer Bradley Craft and Pam Cady, manager of general books, will share excerpts from the epistolary classic, 84, Charing Cross Road with us.
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