Bill Lloyd-Smith.

It is a great pleasure to review this latest effort from David McNamee, an American enthusiast who takes an interest in all aspects of Tasmanian philately. The book is an impressive hardcopy edition printed in a limited edition of 100 copies. The author has done his best to provide a comprehensive bibliography of books and articles that have been published on the philatelic joys of Tasmania. Most references are written in English but a number of articles written in German and one in French are also cited.

The book has 20 chapters and comes with a CDROM for those readers who wish to conduct a computer search for reports of interest to them. The CDROM has a small list of errata and additions to the main text. The introduction has a list of over 100 philatelic journals containing articles on some aspect of Tasmanian philately. Some of the German journals listed are held in the library of the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria. The author also provides a guide on how to use this book. He also discusses the use of the Internet as a means of finding out more on Tasmanian philately. He points out that websites have a habit of changing their names occasionally, so he recommends the use of a search engine.

The first chapter (General Topics) lists a large number of books about various aspects of Tasmania. Not all books and articles in this section are strictly philatelic but most of them are likely to attract interest from serious collectors of Tasmania. Some books listed by the author will be of interest to those interested in the history of Tasmania, even if they are not philatelists at all.

The second chapter, entitled Bibliographies, is short and sweet but lists the major bibliographies of relevance to collectors of Tasmania. The 18 remaining chapters are listed in strictly alphabetical order. Their titles are listed as follows: 3) Chalons, 4) Convict mail, 5) Courier Issue, 6) De La Rue Queen Victoria issues, 7) First and Second Allocation Cancellations, 8) Forgeries, 9) Franked and Official Mail, 10) Instructional Markings, 11) Manuscript Markings, 12) Perfins, 13) Pictorials, 14) Postal forms and postal stationery, 15) Postal history, 16) Postal Markings and TPOs, 17) Registered Mail, 18) Revenues, Railways, Cinderellas and Postal fiscals, 19) Specimens, Reprints, Essays and Proofs, 20) Tattersall’s.

Thus the Chalon heads come before the Courier issues, even though the latter were the first Tasmanian postage stamps to be issued. The 20 chapters cover all aspects of Tasmanian philately, including postal history, postal stationery, perfins, revenues, railway stamps, reprints, forgeries, specimens and, of course, Tattersall’s with many references that are worth following up. The postage stamps alone are covered in four chapters, dealing with the Couriers, Chalon heads, De La Rue issues and the Pictorials, respectively. The so-called postal fiscals could also be added as a fifth chapter since they were for many years very much part of the postage stamps of Tasmania. The chapter on De La Rue issues includes both the Sideface designs from November 1870 onwards and the Tablet series introduced in 1892.

The two consecutive chapters on postal history and postal markings and TPOs have extensive overlap with one another. Perhaps they could have been merged together. Other aspects of postal history are well covered in smaller chapters on such fields as franked and official mail, convict mail, manuscript cancellations and various instructional markings. The chapter on postal stationery has a large number of references, including many reports written in German. Some of the German references evidently influenced the listings in the Higgins and Gage catalogue. A number of German references on other topics, such as official perfins, also appear. Last but not least, there are many references on special topics, such as forgeries, essays, reprints and proofs. The literature on Tatters all’s is well covered.

Of special importance is the large number of German references, especially on the postal stationery. They are important since English-speaking collectors largely abandoned postal stationery when Gibbons dropped them from its catalogue listings after 1900. The German philatelists continued to collect these items and did their best to record new issues and discoveries in the pages of their journals. This information was collated by Dr Ascher in his catalogue of postal stationery for the world. Some runs of these journals are held in the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria library.

The book concludes with a listing of major auctions, which contained large sections on Tasmania, including a large number of ‘name’ collections. Details of the offerings are not provided but the reader is encouraged to explore these resources further.

The study of Tasmanian stamps is by no means complete, even with the extensive listings provided by the author. Many gaps in the story remain to be filled in. Yet there are numerous important references to the literature and these are well covered in the book under review. For instance, this reviewer found a number of interesting articles that he was not previously aware of, even after diligently perusing runs of many well-known journals.

It is perhaps inevitable that a few errors crept in, given the scope of the author’s undertaking. One example appears on page 11 where an article in the Tasmanian Historical Research Association is attributed to Bill Lloyd-Smith and G. Lindsay Locksley. A quick check in the library reveals that there is only one author, namely the second one. The error is flattering to this reviewer but clearly wrong! The well-known Australian dealer of a century ago, Fred Hagen, sometimes has his surname spelt as Hagan. A few other typographical errors were noticed as well.

This book is an important contribution to the growing literature on Tasmanian philately. Even if only a few readers use it to track down articles of interest to them, it will have served its purpose. More importantly, by listing a large number of the older journals, readers can use them to locate contemporary reports about Tasmanian stamps and postal stationery, including the new issue reports. It is a great pleasure for this reviewer to recommend this book to its intended readers.

Published by kind permission of the author
First published in Philately from Australia (March 2005)