Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff ( born April 15, 1916 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † April 9, 1997 in New York) was an American novelist and screenwriter.

Biography

Helene Hanff worked after an aborted Learning English first as a typist, and later as an editor and scriptwriter for television series and theater. She was known by her published in 1970 in England and the U.S. bestseller 84, Charing Cross Road. In it she documented her correspondence with the London Antiquarian bookseller Frank Doel 1949-1969. Starting out as business correspondence was increasingly becoming a pen friendship, which had 1969 inventory up to Doels death, although they never met in person. Several invitations to London failed to either the financial resources or from diseases Hanffs. 1986 the story of Hanff and Doel under the title was filmed in the lead roles between the lines with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Although the book in Britain and the U.S. had great success, it was not published until 2002 in Germany, where it rear ranks took a total of five weeks in the bestseller lists.

On the occasion of book publishing in England invited her London publisher in 1971 it to a reading journey. So it came to the journey of which they dreamed by his own admission a long time. Your experiences of their six -week stay, she describes in diary form in The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.

Since their descriptions of their lives with the public were popular, she wrote from 1978 to 1984 a monthly five-minute contribution to the BBC about the life in New York. This appeared as a collection under the title Letters from New York.

Helene Hanff died in 1997 in New York.

Works (selection)

• 84, Charing Cross Road. A friendship in letters ( " 84, Charing Cross Road "). Goldmann, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-442-73129-1.
• The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. An American in London ( " The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street" ). Goldmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-73212-3.
• Letters from New York ( " Letter from New York "). Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-455-02653-2.

• The Helene Hanff Omnibus. Warner Books, London 1993, ISBN 0-7515-0776-8 ( content: " Underfoot in show business", " 84 Charing Cross Road ", " The duchess of Bloomsbury Street," " Apple of my eye" and "Q 's legacy ").