The Romance of Charing Cross Road
HANFF, Helene. 84 Charing Cross Road. New York: Grossman Publishers. 1970.
8vo. Original red cloth boards with illustrations of black postage stamps to front board and white lettering to spine, fore edge stained red, with illustrated dust jacket with photograph of the shop to the rear panel; pp. [viii], 97, [vii]; slight fading to upper margins of front board; staining to extremities of dust jacket and mild soiling to rear panel, otherwise very good.
First US edition, first printing.
An intimate documentation of the twenty-year transatlantic correspondence between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, chief buyer for Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers on the Charing Cross Road, this iconic epistolary memoir about a woman's romantic relationship with a shop was adapted into a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench and for which Bancroft won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Although no longer affiliated with books, the building of the eponymous address still stands to this day and a blue plaque commemorates the heartwarming story of a literary love affair and the site of the historical shop.
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