Background
Helene Hanff was born on April 15, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
(This memoir tells the remarkable story of how Helene Hanf...)
This memoir tells the remarkable story of how Helene Hanff came to write 84, Charing Cross Road, and how its success changed her. Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books he recommended, began to order them from a small store in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Thus began a correspondence that became an enormously popular book, play, television production, and movie, and that finally led to the trip to England -- and a visit to Q’s study -- that she recounts in this exuberant memoir. Hanff pays her debt to her mentor and shares her joyous adventures with her many fans. "Reading Helene Hanff’s book is like making a new friend -- a charming, wise, and funny one." -- Betty Rollin "A potpourri . . . easy and assured . . . A delightful companion for the odd hour." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Hanff’s charm is such that when she exults . . . we exult right along with her." -- Kirkus Reviews
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140089365/?tag=2022091-20
1986
(This charming classic love story, first published in 1970...)
This charming classic love story, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world. "84, Charing Cross Road will beguile and put you in tune with mankind... It will provide an emollient for the spirit and sheath for the exposed nerve." -- The New York Times "A unique, throat-lumping, side-splitting treasure." -- San Francisco Examiner
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140143505/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(For six years, the author of 84 Charing Cross Road captiv...)
For six years, the author of 84 Charing Cross Road captivated audiences with her monthly BBC broadcasts about her unique adventures living in New York City. Now collected in a charming volume, these vignettes capture an intimate and quirky New York--a witty and humorous depiction that will be treasured by all her admirers.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060975431/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(A celebration of her life-long love for New York, Hanff e...)
A celebration of her life-long love for New York, Hanff embarked on this project as an assignment, and realized she had not been to many of the main tourist attractions- the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the World Trade Center. As make-believe tourists, off she and Patsy travel to describe the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant's Tomb, Fraunces Tavern, some of New York's very special small museums, Orchard Street, a tour of Harlem, and much more. Hanff weaves in historical events and tidbits on some of New York's most notorious personalities.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0918825733/?tag=2022091-20
1995
(Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duche...)
Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Helene Hanff’s delightful travelogue about her “bucket list” trip to London When devoted Anglophile Helene Hanff is invited to London for the English publication of 84, Charing Cross Road—in which she shares two decades of correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller who became a dear friend—she can hardly believe her luck. Frank is no longer alive, but his widow and daughter, along with enthusiastic British fans from all walks of life, embrace Helene as an honored guest. Eager hosts, including a famous actress and a retired colonel, sweep her up in a whirlwind of plays and dinners, trips to Harrod’s, and wild jaunts to their favorite corners of the countryside. A New Yorker who isn’t afraid to speak her mind, Helene Hanff delivers an outsider’s funny yet fabulous portrait of idiosyncratic Britain at its best. And whether she is walking across the Oxford University courtyard where John Donne used to tread, visiting Windsor Castle, or telling a British barman how to make a real American martini, Helene always wears her heart on her sleeve. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is not only a witty account of two different worlds colliding but also a love letter to England and its literary heritage—and a celebration of the written word’s power to sustain us, transport us, and unite us.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006244218X/?tag=2022091-20
(In her spirited, witty and vastly entertaining memoir, He...)
In her spirited, witty and vastly entertaining memoir, Helene Hanff recalls her ingenuous attempts to crash Broadway in the early forties as one of “the other 999.” Naive, nearsighted, frequently penniless but hopelessly stagestruck, she found her life governed by Flanagan’s Law: “No matter what happens to you, it’s unexpected.” Therefore, as a prize-winning Theatre Guild protégée with a brilliant future, Helene naturally found that all the producers who were going to produce her plays didn’t, and all the agents who were going to sell her plays couldn’t. Together with her best friend Maxine, an aspiring actress consigned to playing the comedy-ingénue in plays that regularly folded after five performances, she cultivated the “delicate, illegal art of getting everything for nothing”—from free seats to every Broadway show and neighborhood movie and borrowed outfits from Saks to voice lessons for Maxine and Greek lessons for Helene. To keep body and soul together until Broadway fame arrived, they devised an economic survival system that embraced such unlikely jobs as taking street-corner. Reviews — “Miss Hanff, having a good memory and a lively sense of humor, has composed a theater sketch that is realistic as well as hilarious....One of the most amusing recent theater books about the Broadway theater.”—Brooks Atkinson “A delightful book by an irrepressible author....What really lifts the book to a high level of entertainment is the sparkling humor. To describe the incidents wouldn’t do justice to the book’s charm which comes from the style of writing and Miss Hanff’s boundless optimism.”—Library Journal “A gay and entertaining book which also has substance.”—Boston Herald “Hilarious and highly successful. If you need cheering up, this is it. Here’s hoping Miss Hanff finds more failures to write books about.”—Columbus Dispatch
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XGMPC7Q/?tag=2022091-20
Helene Hanff was born on April 15, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Hanff dedicated her entire career to writing, first as a manuscript reader for Paramount Pictures and later as a television scriptwriter for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC). While she also established herself as a prolific author of children’s books, she gained critical and popular acclaim with her 1970 work, 84, Charing Cross Road. The book originated as a series of letters that Hanff exchanged with an antiquarian bookseller’s chief buyer, Frank Doel, and other staff in London. In an effort to further educate herself by reading classic literature, Hanff ordered books from the store, located on Charing Cross Road, and often wrote of her opinions to Doel. She exchanged witty letters with Doel and the staff, and she also sent some goods to them during wartime rationing overseas. The correspondence continued for some twenty years until Doel’s death.
Hanff ultimately visited the shop herself upon learning of Doel’s passing. Her travels were the basis for her later book The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Hanff initially began pursuing a career in writing in 1938 after winning a Bureau of New Plays fellowship. Later, she gained experience by working with the Theater Guild. She wrote numerous plays, which were never produced, and later described this early part of her career in Underfoot in Show Business.
Her television work, which flourished in the 1950s, included writing for Hallmark Hall of Fame and The Adventures of Ellery Queen. From 1978 to 1985 she provided monthly radio broadcasts for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Woman’s Hour. Her 1992 book, Letter from New York, contained excerpts from those broadcasts. Among her other books were history texts for young readers such as The Day the Constitution Wins Signed and The Movers and Shakers.
Hanff's book 84, Charing Cross Road was later adapted for film, television, and the stage. The apartment building where she lived at 305 E. 72nd Street has been named "Charing Cross House" in her honor. A bronze plaque next to the front door commemorates her residence and authorship of the book. In London, a bronze plaque on the site of the original building commemorates the bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road.
(Nancy Mitford meets Nora Ephron in the pages of The Duche...)
(This charming classic love story, first published in 1970...)
1990(A celebration of her life-long love for New York, Hanff e...)
1995(In her spirited, witty and vastly entertaining memoir, He...)
(For six years, the author of 84 Charing Cross Road captiv...)
1993(This memoir tells the remarkable story of how Helene Hanf...)
1986Hanff never married. None of her writings suggests that she ever had any lasting or even short-term romantic relationship with any person. However, writer Al Senter claimed that she mentioned a long affair with an unnamed 'prominent American' during a conversation with one of the co-founders of Marks and Co, and one obituary of her asserted that 'there were romances'.
