INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE READERS 'Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian book-sellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.' So begins the delightfully reticent love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. For 20 years, this outspoken New York writer and Frank Doel, a rather more restrained London bookseller carry on an increasingly touching correspondence. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969, a letter informed Helene 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."

海蓮·漢芙（Helene Hanff），1916年4月15日齣生在費城。絕大部分的歲月都在曼哈頓度過，一生潦倒。海蓮·漢芙生前從事最多的工作乃是為劇團修審劇本；並曾為若乾電視劇集撰寫劇本。主要的著作有：日記體的紐約市導遊冊《我眼中的蘋果》、自傳《Q的遺産》、《紐約來鴻》、《布魯姆斯伯裏的 女伯爵》以及一係列以少年為對象的美國曆史讀物。1997年，海蓮·漢芙因肺炎病逝於紐約市。