Helene Hanff - 84, Charing Cross Road

First published in 1970, the epistolary work 84, Charing Cross Road chronicles her 20 years of correspondence with Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co, a London bookshop, on which she depended for the obscure classics and British literature titles around which her passion for self-education revolved. She became intimately involved in the lives of the shop's staff, sending them food parcels during England's post-war shortages and sharing with them details of her life in Manhattan.

Due to financial difficulties and an aversion to travel, she put off visiting her English friends until too late; Doel died in December 1968 from peritonitis from a burst appendix, and the bookshop eventually closed. Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty but still standing shop in the summer of 1971, a trip recorded in her 1973 book The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. In "Duchess", Hanff describes her visits with friends and fans to various locations and places of literary and historical interest in London and Southern England. This trip was a highlight of her life - her modesty and sense of humor are evident as she talks about the friends, including Frank Doel's wife, Nora, and daughter, Sheila, who were so devoted to her because of 84 Charing Cross Road, and her love of London.

In the 1987 film adaptation of 84, Charing Cross Road, Hanff was played by Anne Bancroft, while Anthony Hopkins took the part of Frank Doel. Anne Jackson had earlier played Hanff and Frank Finlay Doel in a 1975 adaptation of the book for British television. Ellen Burstyn recreated the role on Broadway in 1982 at the Nederlander Theater in New York City. Elaine Stritch also played Helene Hanff in a television adaptation of 84 Charing Cross Road.

Hanff never married. In the 1987 movie, a photo of a US serviceman is shown in her apartment during the period of World War II, a portrait at which she smiles fondly, suggesting to the viewer that Hanff remained unmarried due to this naval officer's death. No such person is mentioned in her autobiographical Underfoot and none of her writings suggests that she ever had any lasting, or even short-term, romantic relationship with any person. In Duchess she confides to her diary that she was irritated by 'a lot of togetherness' with one of her male English fans who had taken her to Stratford-upon-Avon and Oxford on a two-day driving trip. This implies that Hanff preferred her own company and had no need of a life partner. Her relationship with Frank Doel, warm as it was, was entirely literary.

One interesting facet of Hanff's career is that she was asked by editor Genevieve (Gene) Young of Harper & Row to write her autobiography as a failed playwright-cum-successful television writer before she became notable as an author, publication of Underfoot In Showbusiness preceding 84 Charing Cross Road by eight years.