Last night, javaczuk noted the movie, with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Quinn was on TCM. (It also has Dame Jusy Dench in it and was based on a screenplay by Hugh Whitemore, who did the BBC adaption of the books, which HAnff was involved with and thought incredibly well done.) Mel Brooks, Bancroft's husband, had given her the movie rights one year as a birthday gift. Javaczuk has never read the book, and something about the way I sighed and melted at the name of the film, gave him the clue we should watch that.
We both thoroughly enjoyed it, me quoting line for line bits of the letter, and screaming when favorite lines from the book were left out (like her Oct 15 tirade that the abridged version of Pepys' diary didn't include the description of how is wife chased him out of bed and around the room with a red hot poker, or her asking Frank if he wished to be a character in one of her Ellery Queen TV scripts. "maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, you want to be the murderer or the corpse?")
Anyhow, if you haven't read the books (84 Charing Cross Road which is the 20 year correspondence, The Duchess of , which documents her first trip to London in 1981, and Q's Legacy, which is a grand revisit and overview of the whole wonderful story, plus the making of the BBC production, do so. They're short, quick and very satisfying, especially to bibliophiles.
And if you want to break your heart, review the costs of the books she got for a few dollars, including postage, with the price of rare books now.
Here's a partial list of the books mentioned in 84 Charing Cross.
Partial list of the books Helen Hanff ordered from Marks & Co. and mentioned in 84 Charing Cross Road (Talk about an impressive Mount TBR!)
* Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice, (1813)
* Arkwright, Francis trans. Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon
* Belloc, Hillaire. Essays.
* Catullus - Loeb Classics
* Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales translated by Hill,published by Longmans 1934)
* Delafield, E.M., Diary of a Provincial Lady
* Dobson, Austen ed.. The Sir Roger De Coverley Papers
* Donne, John Sermons
* Elizabethan Poetry
* Graham, Kenneth, The Wind in the Willows
* Greek New Testament
* Grolier Bible
* Hazlitt, William. Selected Essays Of William Hazlitt 1778 To 1830, Nonesuch Press edition.
* Horace - Loeb Classics
* Hunt, Leigh. Essays.
* Johnson, Samuel, On Shakespeare, 1908, Intro by Walter Raleigh
* Jonson, Ben. Timber
* Lamb, Charles. Essays of Elia, (1823).
* Landor, Walter Savage. Vol II of The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor (1876) - Imaginary Conversations
* Latin Bible
* Latin New Testament
* Latin Vulgate Dictionary
* Leonard, R. M. ed. The Book-Lover's Anthology, (1911).
* Newman, John Henry. Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education. Addressed to the Catholics of Dublin- "'Idea of a University" (1852 and 1858)
* Pepys, Samuel. Pepys Diary - 4 Volume Braybrook ed. (1926, revised ed)
* Plato's Four Socratic Dialogues, 1903
* Quiller-Couch, Arthur, The Oxford Book Of English Verse
* Quiller-Couch, Arthur, The Pilgrim's Way
* Quiller-Couch, Arthur, Oxford Book of English Prose
* Sappho - Loeb Classics
* St. John, Christopher Ed. Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw : A Correspondence / The Shaw - Terry Letters : A Romantic Correspondence
* Sterne, Lauence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, (1759)
* Stevenson, Robert Louis. Virginibus Puerisque
* de Tocqueville, Alexis Journey to America (1831–1832)
* Wyatt, Thomas. Poems of Thomas Wyatt
* Walton, Izaak. The Complete Angler . J Major's (2nd ed., 1824).
* Walton, Izaak. The Lives of - John Donne - Sir Henry Wotton - Richard Hooker - George Herbert & Robert Sanderson
* Woolf, Virginia, the Common Reader, 1932.



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