Submitted by Ryan Scott
When I opened the Book Hive, I did so with the vision of creating an experience in the vein of a quaint, cramped English bookshop – the kind now as rare as the old books sold within. One key inspiration behind this concept was Helene Hanff’s 1970 gem 84, Charing Cross Road, a slender memoir told via the correspondence between New York City freelance writer Hanff and London booksellers Marks & Co., who are based at the title’s address. While other staff and friends occasionally chime in with letters to Hanff, her primary rapport is with book dealer Frank Doel.
The first letter is dated October 1949 and the last October 1969. In those 20 years we are given glimpses into a bygone era of typed letters and a Book Post system that united booklovers with their desired reads in the pre-Amazon era. It’s clear that Hanff would have balked at Amazon, preferring to task the intrepid Doel with tracking down rare, dusty volumes loved by previous generations of readers like herself. Her tastes vary from a collection of Hazlitt’s essays to a Vulgate bible to a book of romantic poetry slim enough to carry in her pocket to Central Park. The dutiful Doel scours the shelves at Marks & Co. and rummages through estate sales around England in his quest to fulfill Hanff’s particular tastes, sometimes taking months or years to pin down the perfect book to ship off across the ocean. What a test of patience for today’s readers, who often expect to have a much-wanted book in their hands by the next day or maybe a week if they’re truly strong-willed.
Doel always delivered, much to Hanff’s delight. Her letters burst with enthusiasm over the beautiful books she received, lamenting how her orange crate bookshelves don’t do justice to the treasures Doel has dug up. Out of gratitude, Hanff would go on to supply the bookshop staff with gifted crates of eggs, ham, tinned tongue, and biscuits – all unique treats for the occupants of post-war London, which remained under strict food rationing into the 1950s.
Seeded by books, we watch a friendship blossom between the fiery Hanff and the straitlaced Doel that flowers into playful humour and respect. As we read on, we feel for the struggling writer who so desperately wanted to visit the beloved bookshop, only to have her travel plans curtailed year after year. A 1951 letter from a friend visiting London gives a vicarious glimpse of Marks & Co., described as “straight out of Dickens”, dim, smelling of “must and dust and age”, with shelves that “go on forever”.
Marks & Co. was a booklover’s paradise. It is long gone now, since converted into a McDonald’s. Only a small plaque remains to commemorate this classic book about a bookshop and the bonds it forged between booklovers, regardless of time and place.
84, Charing Cross Road is available for purchase at the Book Hive at 84 Sykes St N.
