Piano is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bowling Green State University. In the following essay, Piano explores a writer's emotional and intellectual attachment to books as represented by her correspondence to a bookseller at an antiquarian bookshop in London.

Published in 1970, 84, Charing Cross Road by writer Helene Hanff is an unusual memoir that reveals the author's love not only of books but also her passion for letter writing and, on a deeper note, human communication. The story centers around a series of letters written by Helene Hanff, a New York writer, to the bookseller Frank Doel, who works at the antiquarian bookstore Marks & Co., located for many years at 84, Charing Cross Road in central London. Beginning in 1949, the letters cover twenty years of correspondence, ending in 1969 with the death of Frank Doel, who has over the years provided Helene with an extraordinary number of used...