ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, April 12, 1997               TAG: 9704140065
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-2  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: NEW YORK
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT

HELENE HANFF, `CHARING CROSS' AUTHOR, DIES AT 80

Helene Hanff, who wrote the best-selling book ``84 Charing Cross Road'' and others, died of pneumonia Wednesday. She was 80.

The 1970 novel was Hanff's own bittersweet love story, chronicling her correspondence with London bookseller Frank Doel between 1949 and 1969.

The success of the book in England led to its adaptation as a television drama, a West End play and a film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.

Hanff also wrote, ``Underfoot in Show Business,'' ``Apple of My Eye'' and ``The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.''

``If I live to be very old, all my memories of the glory days will grow vague and confused, till I won't be certain any of it really happened,'' she once wrote. ``But the books will be there, on my shelves and in my head - the one enduring reality I can be certain of till the day I die.''

-ASSOCIATED PRESS

LENGTH: Short :   28 lines