Marks & Co is the name most prominently associated with a London antiquarian and second-hand bookshop that traded at 84 Charing Cross Road, and which became widely known through Helene Hanff's 1970 epistolary memoir 84, Charing Cross Road. The name is also used by a number of unrelated commercial firms in different countries.
The bookshop
According to encyclopedic accounts, the business was founded in the 1920s by Benjamin Marks and Mark Cohen, with Cohen agreeing to have his surname abbreviated in the trading name. Some biographical sources on Frank Percy Doel (1908–1968), the shop's chief buyer, state that he joined Marks & Co. in 1924 when it was located at 106–108 Charing Cross Road, and that it later moved to number 84; the exact timing of the move and of the firm's founding is therefore reported somewhat inconsistently across sources.
The shop is described as having built a considerable reputation as an antiquarian bookseller in Great Britain and Ireland in the mid-twentieth century, with customers reported to include Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, Lord Alanbrooke, Michael Foot, British and European royalty, universities and the British Museum. Benjamin Marks's son, Leo Marks, later became known as a codebreaker and codemaker for the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War; his interest in cryptography is said to have been stimulated by his father's use of book-pricing codes.
Sources also record that during the 1930s Marks & Co. was a member of a then-secret and illegal London "book ring", in which a group of dealers agreed not to bid against one another at auctions and subsequently divided the proceeds of private re-bidding among themselves. When the arrangement became known, an undertaking to discontinue the practice was reportedly signed at the offices of the Times Literary Supplement to prevent the matter being raised in the House of Commons.
84, Charing Cross Road
Helene Hanff, a New York writer, first wrote to the shop in 1949 after seeing an advertisement for it, and corresponded principally with Frank Doel until his death in December 1968. Their letters, along with those exchanged with other staff members, were published in 1970 as 84, Charing Cross Road. The bookshop closed in December 1970. Hanff's account of her 1971 visit to London was published in 1973 as The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. The correspondence was adapted into a 1975 BBC television play, a 1976 BBC radio drama, a 1981 stage play, and a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. The five-storey building at 84 Charing Cross Road still stands, and a brass plaque on the street frontage marks the former site of the shop.
Other uses of the name
Because "Marks & Co" is a generic form of business name, it is shared by numerous unrelated enterprises, among them an accountancy practice in Brighton, England; a property management company in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, United States; a chartered accountancy partnership in Gujarat, India; the investment and advisory firm Carl Marks & Co. in New York; and various retail and design businesses. These entities have no established connection to the London bookshop.
Assessment
Marks & Co is an established subject of encyclopedic coverage, principally through the Wikipedia article bearing that name and through the substantial literature and adaptations connected with 84, Charing Cross Road. Coverage is, however, uneven: the firm's corporate history beyond its association with that correspondence is documented mainly in brief references and in sources of varying reliability, and some details—such as its founding date and the date of its relocation to 84 Charing Cross Road—are reported inconsistently. Statements above are limited to what the cited sources record; where sources conflict, that conflict has been noted rather than resolved.
