In March 1978, Helene Hanff received a letter from Muriel Brittain who wrote: 'I am the widow of Frederic Brittain, biographer of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. This study is not a biography of Helene Hanff: her own books form a complete autobiography, except for personal details about which she was always reticent it is, rather, an examination of the effect which Q's writings had on her life and writing career and which she acknowledged in her 1985 book, Q's Legacy. Grossman Publishers specialized in what Helene Hanff described as 'slim, offbeat volumes – Ben Shahn, a new translation of Catullus, James Lipton's An Exultation of Larks' (Hanff, 1986, p.29) for a small, select readership, and so not expected to sell many copies however, 84 Charing Cross Road rapidly became a 'cult' book and was bought for reprint by Reader's Digest. 84 Charing Cross Road was published by Dick Grossman of New York. However, Q had already had a profound influence upon her and was to be the catalyst for her enormous success with 84 Charing Cross Road, a volume of letters, which projected her to fame in the 1970s. He died in 1944 when she was 28, a young Jewish woman born in 1916 and brought up during the Depression in Philadelphia, USA. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, 'Q', never knew Helene Hanff.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |