Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916–April 9, 1997) was an American writer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is best known as the author of the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a play, teleplay, and film of the same name.
Her career, which saw her move from writing unproduced plays to helping create some of the earliest television dramas to becoming a kind of professional New Yorker, goes far beyond the charm of that one book. She called her 1961 memoir Underfoot in Show Business, and it chronicled the struggle of an ambitious young playwright to make it in the world of New York theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. She worked in publicists' offices and spent summers on the "straw hat" circuit along the East Coast of the United States, writing plays that were admired by some of Broadway's leading producers but which somehow never saw the light of day.
She wrote and edited scripts for a variety of early television dramas produced out of New York, all the while continuing to try and move from being what she called "one of the 999 out of 1,000 who don't become Noel Coward." When the bulk of television production moved to California, her work slowly dried up, and she turned to writing for magazines and, eventually, to the books that made her reputation.
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 the 1987 film of 84 Charing Cross Road (film), Hanff was played by Anne Bancroft, while Anthony Hopkins took the part of Frank Doel. Anne Jackson had earlier played Hanff 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.
She later put her obsession with British scholar Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch to use in a book called Q's Legacy. Other books include Apple of My Eye, an idiosyncratic guide to New York City, and A Letter from New York (1992), which reprinted talks she gave on the BBC's Woman's Hour between 1978 and 1985.
Hanff was never shy about her fondness for cigarettes and martinis, but nevertheless lived to be 80, dying of diabetes in 1997 in New York City. 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.
84, Charing Cross Road is a charming record of bibliophilia, cultural difference, and imaginative sympathy. For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence.
In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover.
When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic -- but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin.
Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969, the firm's secretary informed her that Frank Doel had died. In the collection's penultimate entry, Helene Hanff urges a tourist friend, "If you happen to pass by 84, Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. I owe it so much."
书渣们,你们从哪儿读出《查令十字街84号》有爱情味道呢?仅从一句德尔太太的信中写了句“我过去对您心存嫉妒”吗,那是标准的英国式礼貌而已。全书145页,作者书信原文93页,如果没那些添油加醋的序呀跋呀读后感呀,这书凭着几封干巴巴的信件恐怕早被扔到书架下端了,没有人再...
评分……while other people are reading fifty books I’m reading one book fifty times. Helene Hanff 在绝大多数时候,阅读是件孤单的事情。在无数的可能性中,我们在某一个时间某一个地点某一个人生阶段,遇到了某一本书,而被当中的某一段文字所启发...
评分一.去伪存真 我本能的怀疑、且无端的厌恶一切自我标榜的事物。哪怕是好东西,一经标榜,也会变得那么面目可疑。 恶俗标榜导致适得其反的例子,莫过于上海译文出版的《情人》:当初因为是王道乾翻译版的缘故,我才买下了这本书。尽管如此,我还是恶狠狠的企图撕掉该书的封...
评分广州的这场雨,连绵许久,以至于只能闲在家里看书。 在太阳小露的半天,一溜烟去了趟书店,然后就买到了这本。 书的护封上有一句:二十年间缘悭一面,相隔万里莫逆于心。最是动人。读书人的乐趣,莫过于遇见好书而又价廉,这也是我喜欢旧书店的原因。而因书结缘,应该是书店的...
评分常常会有这样的感觉吧,觉得自己就像一个人生活在这个世界。 多想推开一扇窗,就在窗外遇见一个能懂我一切的你。 只要一个你,就足以傲视所有的孤独。只要有你的爱怜,就觉得自己是时间最受宠爱的那朵花。只要有你的默认,就觉得自己有最举世的才华。 我们匆匆行走在每一个日子...
It reminded me of Daddy-long-legs at first, but then turned out to be more like Mary and Max. In the end, only one sentence echoed in my mind: love actually, is all around. Yes, definitely, all around...
评分邂逅:2013年初电子书; 旅程:2013.3.2.; 地点:床头; 原本是毕业行的旅行读物,现在短暂回来后一天读完。二十载爱书年华,一纸唏嘘。
评分这个版本好美,班克劳夫特的序言也写得朴实动人,书末有很多补充材料,书中有主角照片,终于看到Helene和Frank真人了,不得不说电影的选角还是很到位的。另外不知道是我记性太差,还是中文版有删减,我不记得 Helene和Frank的妻子有那么多书信往来,之前一直记得是她只在 Frank 死后写过一封。Helene的语言很生动,比看中文版更有画面感,52年蜜月期与店员们的书信往来,感觉到一种唐顿庄园式的友善和命运的牵连。到了60年代,书信减少,大家都失散了,那种失落感是读中文版时忽略了的。也是第一次真正读懂 Frank 死后她写给朋友那封信,写出来的是情结,写不出来的是心酸。
评分让我想起了玛丽和马克思
评分这样的书店怕是合了所有爱书的人的遐想了~HELENE,你应该去一次英国的
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