The Penny Black Stamp Store: Recommended Books on Great Britain Postage Stamps 1840-1901

Friday 24 June 2011

Recommended Books on Great Britain Postage Stamps 1840-1901

Catalogues

1. Stanley Gibbons. Great Britain Specialised Stamp Catalogue Vol 1: Queen Victoria 15th ed. 2008 (new edition every ~2-4 years) a "Must Have" for the QV specialist
2. Collect British Postmarks: The Handbook to British Postal Markings and Their Values, J.T.P. Whitney

3. GB Concise. Useful as a handy reference, useful if you do not want to become too specialised or if you just want updated catalogue values (new edition every year)

Historical Info

1. Robson Lowe. The British Postage Stamp of the nineteenth century, 1968 (This is an excellent book both for historical info and pictures of rare Victorian stamps)

Plating guides

1. J B Seymour and C. Gardiner-Hill. The Postage Stamps of Great Britain. Part 1 Imperforate line-engraved Issues (useful for historical info, this contains sheet marginal markings of line-engraved stamps)
2. Litchfield, Guide lines to the Penny Black

Source: http://www.imagesoftheworld.org/stamps/books.htm

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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.