On 5 October , year-old Helene Hanff had no inkling the letter she had just posted to an address in Charing Cross Roadwas only the first of many that would one day not only make Marks & 's most famous used bookshop, but bring her the fame that had so long eluded her as a playwright and author of American history books for children.
Helene (pronounced "helane") was born 15 Apr , the daughter of a Philadelphia shirt maker. She won a scholarship to Temple University, only to have it evaporate at the end of her freshman year when funding dried up in the Great Depression.
Undaunted, she haunted the public library for books on the art of writing, eventually discovering five volumes of lectures that Arthur Quiller-Coach(commonly known as "Q") had given at Cambridgeto young men fresh from the hallowed halls of Etonand Harrow, and who were already familiar with classics such as Milton's Paradise Lost.
Which Helene wasn't, so back to the library she went for Milton, and over the next eleven years, every other writer that Q's students had digested long before they ever set foot in his lecture hall.
Helene credits Q, John Donneand
John Henry Newman(author of Idea Of A University), all of whom lived in the same rooms at Trinity College, Oxford although not at the same time,
