Author Helene Hanff Dies Of Pneumonia

Helene Hanff, the author whose 20-year correspondence with an English book seller inspired the book, play and movie “84, Charing Cross Road,” has died. She was 80.

Hanff died of pneumonia Wednesday in Manhattan, where she had lived most of her life, her publishers said.

Her work was barely noticed until 1970, when she wrote “84, Charing Cross Road,” the address of Marks & Co. of London, based on letters she exchanged with the shop and its chief buyer, Frank Doel, between 1949 and 1969.

Reviewer Thomas Lask in The New York Times called the book “a charmer: a 19th century book in a 20th century world.”