Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. 84, Charing Cross Road is built entirely from letters. What were your overall impressions of reading a book constructed in this way? If you’ve read epistolary fiction, whether a work of classic literature like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) or a more recent take on the genre like Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrow’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), how did reading epistolary nonfiction compare?

2. Discuss what you liked most and least about the book. Did your feelings shift between the early, comic letters of the 1950s and the more elegiac final pages?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Hanff says that she loves secondhand books “that open to the page some previous owners read oftenest” (7). Have you ever felt a similar sense of connection to a previous reader through a used book, an inscription, or a marginal note?

2. Hanff insists that she “never reads novels” until Pride and Prejudice converts her. Have you ever had a book change your sense of what you like or who you are as a reader? What was the book, and what shifted?

3. Hanff defers her trip to England for nearly 20 years. Have you ever postponed something you genuinely wanted? Looking back, how do you understand the reasons for the deferral?

4. Hanff sends food parcels to people she has never met because she is moved by their hardship. Discuss a time when you gave or received a gift from a near-stranger that felt disproportionate to the relationship.

5. Nora Doel confesses in her final letter that she was “always a little jealous” of the Hanff-Frank exchanges (93). Do you find her admission generous, painful, or both? Have you ever recognized something similar in a relationship of your own?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The early letters are shaped by postwar British food rationing, which did not end until 1954. How does this historical backdrop change the meaning of Hanff’s parcels, and what does the correspondence reveal about ordinary life in postwar London that a history book might miss?

2. Hanff tells a newspaperman that she will go looking for “the England of English literature,” and he replies, “Then it’s there” (13). What do you make of the gap between literary England and actual England in the book, and have you ever held a similarly idealized image of a place?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. The book is constructed entirely from letters, with significant gaps where letters are missing, including most of Hanff’s thank-you notes. How does the epistolary form ask the reader to participate in the storytelling, and what does the book gain by leaving so much out?

2. Track the evolution of salutations in the letters, from “Gentlemen” and “Dear Madam” to “Frank” and “Helene.” What do these shifting salutations say about the relationship between the correspondents?

3. Which books seemed to leave the most lasting impression on Hanff? What does this say about her, as well as about the books themselves?

4. The cast of correspondents widens significantly across the book to include Cecily, Megan, Bill, Nora, Sheila, Mary Boulton, and others. How do the expanding voices change the texture of the book, and what does it reveal about Hanff’s place in the lives of the Marks & Co. staff?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. 84, Charing Cross Road has been adapted for stage, television, and a 1987 film. If you were casting a new adaptation today, whom would you choose for Hanff and Frank, and what tonal qualities would you want the adaptation to preserve?

2. If you were to write a short letter to a bookshop, library, author, or stranger whose work has meant something to you, what would you say, and how would you say it?