In one letter, she described making her first Yorkshire pudding from a recipe sent by one of the staff. Her letters to London evolved into accounts of life in New York and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Her obituaries, published in 1997, were full of new information. Soon Hanff was corresponding not only with Doel, but with his gentle, patient wife and with all the staff at Marks & Co. She personally helped the shop's staff, sending them delicious and otherwise unobtainable food parcels. Hanff understood how difficult it was that bombed-out London was still suffering from food rationing which did not end until July 1954. The letters weren’t just about books, although Chaucer, Jane Austen, John Donne, Samuel Pepys and others were what this particular American yearned for. Doel read her impersonal first note (in response to a newspaper advertisement) in late 1949, and from then on, the two “strangers” became closer and closer. Hanff didn’t have any money but she had a passion for out-of-print British classics which she could not find in New York. This was the true story of American writer Helene Hanff (1916–97)’s 20 years of correspondence with Englishman Frank Doel (1908–68), chief buyer for the London bookshop, Marks and Co.
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