This is a record of a love-affair between a lady and a shop. They never met, but it lasted for twenty years and brought out the best of them both for all that time. The shop was Marks & Company, a London bookseller dealing in rare and secondhand books. The lady was a merry New Yorker who didn't believe in being impersonal. Instead of writing orders for books, she wrote letters, first to Frank Doel, the manager, then to members of his staff and his family as well; and because when the correspondence started, on October 5, 1949, Britain was still enduring rationing, she sent delicious parcels of tongue, eggs, biscuits and so on. Very British and correct to start with, Frank Doel and his staff soon responded with astonished pleasure, and the resulting relationship was a delight to both sides.

The correspondence ended only with Frank Doel's death, which was followed by the closing of Marks & Company. It is preserved in this book: a unique articulation of the joy and warmth between this warm-hearted booklover and the people who so much enjoyed supplying her with what she wanted.

From the dust jacket of the first UK Edition