Object-ives #18: On First Buying A Copy of '84, Charing Cross Road' as a New Bookseller

In the autumn of 2017, at 27, I was given a bookshop for my birthday. Sort of

It happened to be on my birthday that I got a managerial job at a secondhand bookshop in a small, sleepy basement mall in downtown Nova Scotia. Once a popular shopping and lunch spot for the government office crowd who worked above, it was now long past its prime, making the bookshop especially quiet and reader-friendly.

The owner had passed rather suddenly, and I happened to call at just the right time, asking after the Folio edition of Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes I had seen weeks earlier. When I described the shelf it had been on down to the number of paces from the counter, the owner’s husband asked if I wanted a job. Scoffing, I replied, “I wish.” He was serious, and my life was forever changed.

I walked around my new workspace, gazing at the shelves, long overdue for a re-alphabetizing, with some of their contents piled on the floor. I couldn’t wait to get started. When I came to the Classic Literature section, my eyes spied a Penguin Books copy of 84, Charing Cross Road, its small orange spine beckoning me. I gave a sharp intake and snatched it up, instinct declaring there couldn’t be a more appropriate moment to read it for the first time.

I had heard of this little book but never sought it out intentionally, having assumed it was just another charming novel about bookselling. I had no idea, until I sat down to read it, that it was an epistolary work of nonfiction, comprised entirely of letters between the author, American writer Helene Hanff, and Frank Doel, a bookseller for Marks & Co. in London, sent over two decades.

I was hooked from the beginning, and I’d read it on my bus commute and lunch breaks with cups of tea at the bookshop. It’s not a very long book, at under a hundred pages, but I lingered over the letters and read them slowly, or repeatedly (as one often does with letters), to prolong the cozy feeling of being in another time.

Delightfully, I watched Helene and Frank’s formalities slowly slip away as their writing tones turned familiar and even affectionate with the passage of time. I learned that in the late forties secondhand books were a rare commodity in North America, except for rare (and expensive) first editions, which led Helene to write to Marks & Co. I’d share in Frank’s triumph when he located a book for Helene she’d asked for a long while back. My eyes misted when Helene sent care packages of meat and other hard-to-find post-war foods, and again when subsequent letters of gratitude began to appear from other staff at the bookshop, or from Frank’s wife Nora. And, finally, I felt the sudden shock to discover that not only did Frank and Helene never get to meet in person, but she was also never to see the titular bookshop while it was in business. I sat there quietly sniffling at the loss and injustice on behalf of Helene.

84, Charing Cross Road was the perfect unintentional primer for my bookselling journey, and supports the theory that book people are the best people. I still have that original copy, and have made it my quest to collect as many editions of it as possible. So far I’m at four, with volumes from the US, Britain, and Ireland. I reread it every couple of years as a reminder of my time as a bookseller. While I had relatively little in common with these two people, I could take my cues of quality customer service from Frank, and Helene’s insatiable hunger for books, in order to do my best to find new stories and old favorites for my patrons. I did this, blissfully, for seven and a half months, until the bookshop was sold and I was unable to go along with it. I wouldn’t trade my time there for anything, and would love nothing more than to do it all over again.

Meaghan Steeves (she/her) is a freelance nonfiction editor and writer based in Nova Scotia. Her writing has appeared in Little White Lies, Mslexia Magazine, Hard Copy Media, and Oh Reader Magazine. She loves her small dog and spends her free time reading, baking, book hunting, and watching documentaries. You can find her at choicewordsediting.com or on Instagram at @choicewordsedit.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

Recommended reading on possessions:

“I’m finally ready to tell all…” by Lena Dunham, Good Thing Going

“On New Pens” by Jami Attenberg, CRAFT TALK

“This Is The Year You Start Shopping Differently.” by Erika Veurink, Long Live

“‘Sidewalk joy’: From keychains to comics, small exchanges spark moments of connection” by Clara Longo de Freitas, The Baltimore Banner

“A Bay Area Librarian Is Using Vintage Vinyl to Show Tweens Where Music Comes From” by Soleil Ho, Coyote

“Sorry, Your Kids Don’t Want Your Stuff or Your Parents’ Stuff” by Richard Eisenberg, Next Avenue