Roose-Evans' play opened at the Ambassador Theater on West Lane, just a scone's throw from the site where the book shop had stood. Nevertheless, business continued to decline rapidly. Jackson said, shops like his had been forced to stock more and more popular and second-hand books in an effort to reach a broader market. Indeed, at some performances of ''84 Charing Cross Road,'' older members of the audience sigh audibly when the American writer, Helene Hanff, negotiates the sale of a first edition of some Cardinal Newman essays for $6. Jackson, whose father opened the store in 1906, said that today's economy simply doesn't allow the kind of limited volume trade that was possible in the 1950's and even in the 60's, when scholars could unearth hardto-find books here at bargain prices.

Then, motioning toward the cash register, the clerk added ruefully, ''But the interest has been purely romantic, if you know what I mean.''Ī few doors down, two of the street's oldest shops, Neuman's and Albert Jackson & Son, are clearing out their inventory, in anticipation of closing before the end of this year. ''Yes, I suppose the play has renewed interest in the book shops,'' said a clerk in Reade & Judd's, a high-ceilinged corner shop where, for less than a half-dollar, one can pick up publicity photographs of West End theatrical productions from bygone seasons. The old shop has been boarded up since 1970, and further down the street an entire block of six book stores has been razed to make way for an office complex. Now only a small brass plaque on a nearby building indicates the former site of Marks & Co., the antiquarian shop where James Roose-Evans' play is set between the years 1949 and '69. Ironically, just as ''84 Charing Cross Road'' - the play based on an American writer's 20-year correspondence with a London book shop - is giving London and New York audiences an intimate look into one of the street's most venerable shops, the book market itself is dying. The Saturday-morning traffic of students, writers, tourists and the merely curious still moves in and out of these shops as it has done for the past century, sending up a steady jingle of door bells and ushering in drafts of cold air, so that the cashiers often wear fingerless gloves as they rummage in their cigar boxes for shillings and pence.īut now, instead of ferreting out that rare first edition of Boswell or that obscure essay by Colley Cibber, customers are more likely to be seeking a second-hand copy of a textbook, a popular novel or even a paperback. Dan Hulbert is theater critic for The Dallas Times Herald.Īs one walks down London's Charing Cross Road from Cambridge Circus - a sentimental pilgrimage I myself made a few weeks ago - the book stores become smaller and older, as though the newer establishments up the hill were literally squeezing them into the Thames.

Charing cross road 84