84, Charing Cross Road

“Such a delightful reading experience . . . During Covid . . . everything was so chaotic and weird and depressing and lonely, and that book felt like the antidote to all of that.” —Virginia Evans, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Correspondent, on The New York Times Book Review podcast

A heartwarming love story about people who love books for readers who love books

This funny, poignant, classic love story unfolds through a series of letters between Helene Hanff, 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 charming, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Discover the relationship that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world, and was the basis for a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.

Helene Hanff (1916–1997) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the 1940s and ’50s she wrote plays and television scripts in New York City but found little success until her best-known book, 84, Charing Cross Road, was published in 1970. The book was a smash hit and has been adapted for the radio, stage, film, and television.