海莲·汉芙（Helene Hanff），1916年4月15日出生在费城。绝大部分的岁月都在曼哈顿度过，一生潦倒。海莲·汉芙生前从事最多的工作乃是为剧团修审剧本；并曾为若干电视剧集撰写剧本。主要的著作有：日记体的纽约市导游册《我眼中的苹果》、自传《Q的遗产》、《纽约来鸿》、《布鲁姆斯伯里的 女伯爵》以及一系列以少年为对象的美国历史读物。1997年，海莲·汉芙因肺炎病逝于纽约市。

INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE READERS 'Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian book-sellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.' So begins the delightfully reticent love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London. For 20 years, this outspoken New York writer and Frank Doel, a rather more restrained London bookseller carry on an increasingly touching correspondence. No doubt their letters would have continued, but in 1969, a letter informed Helene that Frank Doel had died. In the collection's penultimate entry, Helene Hanff urges a tourist friend, "If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. I owe it so much."