Marks & Co, also incorrectly referred to as "Marks & Company" or colloquially as "84", was a well-known antiquarian bookseller

Bookselling

Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers or bookmen.-Bookstores today:...

 located at Cambridge Circus

Cambridge Circus

Cambridge Circus may be a reference to:* Cambridge Circus , a group of economists who worked with John Maynard Keynes* Cambridge Circus, London, the junction of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road in London...

 - 84, Charing Cross Road

Charing Cross Road

Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

The shop was founded in the 1920s by Benjamin Marks and Mark Cohen. Cohen was persuaded to allow his name to be abbreviated in the company's name. It provided the basis for the book of correspondence by Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff was an American writer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play, , and film of the same name.- Career :...

 entitled 84 Charing Cross Road

84 Charing Cross Road

84, Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff, later made into a stage play, television play and film, about the twenty-year correspondence between her and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co, antiquarian booksellers located at the eponymous address in London, England.Hanff, in search of...

, later made into a stage play, television play and BAFTA-winning film

84 Charing Cross Road (film)

84 Charing Cross Road is a 1987 British/American drama film directed by David Hugh Jones. The screenplay by Hugh Whitemore is based on a play by James Roose-Evans, which itself was an adaptation of the 1970 epistolary memoir of the same name by Helene Hanff, a compilation of letters between herself...

. The shop has since been knocked through into 24 Cambridge Circus, currently the Med Kitchen restaurant. A plaque on the wall commemorates the shop and the book.

Famous connections

The company built a good reputation for itself and had famous customers, including Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

, George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Lord Alanbrooke

Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke

Field Marshal The Rt. Hon. Alan Francis Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, KG, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO & Bar , was a senior commander in the British Army. He was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff during the Second World War, and was promoted to Field Marshal in 1944...

, Michael Foot

Michael Foot

Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

, royalty and public institutions such as universities and the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

.

Benjamin Marks' son, Leo Marks

Leo Marks

Leopold Samuel Marks was an English cryptographer, screenwriter and playwright.-Early life:Born the son of an antiquarian bookseller in London, he was first introduced to cryptography when his father showed him a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's story, "The Gold-Bug"...

, became a prominent member of the wartime organisation, Special Operations Executive

Special Operations Executive

The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...

, specialising in codes

Cryptography

Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...

. His interest in the subject had been born by his father's use of book pricing codes.

Book ring

Marks & Co were members of a then-secret and illegal "book ring", whereby a group of London book dealers declined to bid against each other at auctions. Instead, one of them would buy at prices kept low by the lack of competition, the ring would then bid privately between themselves and the surplus would be shared amongst the unsuccessful ring members.

When the secrecy surrounding the bidding ring was broken, a scandal was threatened. In order to avoid this, an undertaking was signed, at the offices of the Times Literary Supplement, by the ring's members to bring the practice ("if it existed") to an end.

External links

• An unofficial history of Marks & Co