In October 1949, Helene Hanff, a writer in New York, wrote to Marks & Co., antiquarian booksellers at 84 Charing Cross Road in London. The replies came from Frank Doel, the shop’s chief buyer. As the writer Maggie Fergusson describes them, his letters began “Dear Madam” and were “cautious almost to the point of curtness.”
Hanff teased him, and over the years his letters became less formal. Doel’s colleagues and family began to write to her too, and she sent food parcels to postwar London. The correspondence lasted twenty years, until Doel died in December 1968. Hanff published it in 1970 as 84, Charing Cross Road.