Save the date!
Please join us for a very special evening event to celebrate the launch of the brand new edition of Letter from New York by Helene Hanff.
We are delighted to announce that New York Times best-selling author Jean Hanff Korelitz will be in conversation with Bruce Eric Kaplan - illustrator of the book and renowned New Yorker cartoonist - at McNally Jackson bookshop (Seaport branch) in New York on September 21st.
Tickets are now available via the McNally Jackson events page, where you can RSVP and find out more details.
A bit about the book
Manderley Press is delighted to announce the publication of a brand-new edition of Helene Hanff’s Letter from New York – another literary jewel from the author of 84, Charing Cross Road.
To showcase this wonderful book, we commissioned the New York Times bestselling author Jean Hanff Korelitz (author ofThe Plot) to pen a new introduction – she is a cousin of Helene Hanff’s, and was inspired to become a writer after meeting her as a teenager.
The front cover was specially designed by New Yorker illustrator Bruce Eric Kaplan, also a fan of the author and a resident of New York City too.
Helene Hanff read aloud these stories of her life in New York for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. This book is a collection of selected scripts from this series, through which the author offers us a glimpse into her own everyday tales of the city.
What started as a 6-month trial in 1978 turned into a 6-year project, during which time Helene Hanff captivated radio audiences with her monthly broadcasts – each one a love-letter to her adopted city of NYC.
Written in her trademark whimsical and upbeat style, Helene Hanff transports us right to the heart of Manhattan in the 1980s, describing her favourite places, people and pets with gentle humour, and introducing the reader to the ups and downs of life in a high-rise apartment building in New York City (“the last small town in America”).
Long before the cast of Friends – and Sarah Jessica Parker’s iconic evocation of life in the city – recreated a New York existence for us to experience vicariously, these 5-minute vignettes were the perfect way for international readers and native New Yorkers alike to revel in the quotidian, and the glamour, of city life. And to discover the unexpected hidden gems – and treasured traditions – of New York City.
Letter from New York is still a delight to read, 40 years after it was first written – a timeless and beguiling tale of everyday life in this great city, by one of the best-loved authors of the twentieth-century.
