Free Stamp Literature

With the current enforced isolation many of us are currently under, it might be a good idea, in order to get our minds off the terrible news bombarding us daily, to sit back with some good old fashioned reading material. But if we don't actually have any books, and the libraries and bookstores are closed, where else can we turn? Luckily, there is a wonderful resource that I bet a lot of members of this forum might not be familiar with. It's called Project Gutenberg, and it's free to use, and consists of tens of thousands of books that are in the public domain, that is, their copyrights have expired. Included among these are a number of titles that will appeal to stamp collectors, and even though most of them are a hundred years or more old, there are still some delightful books available, which you can read directly on your computer screen or download to a kindle or other portable device. Among the books I found are "Peeps at Postage Stamps" by Stanley Johnson and published about 1915. This one has an interesting anecdote about how he had a few years earlier gone into a post office and bought several copies of the Queen Victoria penny lilac with 14 corner dots and even then, in 1910 was worth a premium (4 shillings, about one dollar at the time, the author proudly tells us. Today that stamp catalogues at 220 pounds mint in Stanley Gibbons) "What Philately Teaches Us" with an excellent explanation of what the "Tughra" is and what it means. Anyone familiar with early Turkish stamps will know what that looks like, and several others including a real oddity: a directory of stamp dealers in the United States, compiled by a then unknown teenager in upstate New York called L. Frank Baum, who would a few years later go on to write one of the most famous children's fantasy books of all time: The Wizard of Oz. If you go to their website, type stamp collecting or stamps, or philately in the search line. Of course, it's not just stamp related books, there are thousands upon thousands of books on every subject imaginable, including all the classics. But don't be like that guy on the episode of the Twilight Zone and break your glasses! Happy reading!

Thank you!
Didn't even know PG existed.

Most libraries have extensive resources that can be accessed on line.

In the past, I have found many free philatelic books ready for download by typing "free stamp collecting books pdf" or "free philatelic books pdf" into Google.

The Stamp Smarter website also has an extensive online library.

http://stampsmarter.com/Learning/Ho...earning.html

That episode was on MeTV just last night, and it definitely made me think of the current situation. (Thankfully, I personally don't need my glasses for reading.)

Here's a Project Gutenberg book that some may find of interest:

The Postage Stamp in War, by Fred. J. Melville (publ. 1915)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3400.../34007-h.htm

Burgess Meredith playing Mr. Beemus (Twilight Zone).

And the best thing is that we have time enough at last. Let's hope we don't squander it

I'd like to find this one
1892
Cannot source anywhere.

The postage stamps, envelopes, wrappers, post cards, and telegraph stamps, of British India, and Ceylon,
comp. and pub. by the Philatelic society, London. 1892

Google Books

https://books.google.com/books?id=h...n%22&f=false

You can go to settings and download PDF

[Edit} Oops! Not the right volume. This is Africa. Sorry.

Try this one...

https://books.google.com/books?id=x...n%22&f=false

Mike

Members often say that, but it appears Australia does not have the "settings" option.
This happens often with books.

No Luck Mike.

Rod,

Have sent personal message with what I hope is a workable link.
Mike

Michael,

Thank you so much.

Great site!!!

I decided to see how long I could go with my Kindle by not paying for books. How many sci-fi books (and others) could I get and not pay for them?

Used to go to PG every few days to see what goodies had been added.

In addition to Project Gutenberg as a source of digitized reading and reference material, there is HathiTrust which is a collaborative project of the largest US research libraries. It was initially seeded with scans that various University libraries got as part of their participation in Google books, but has lots more.

I link here to a search in the HathiTrust catalog on stamps with a limit to full view available.
That's a pretty crude search, but I did it just to illustrate.... It yields a lot of results, some of which are rather interesting, not all of which are pre-1923. For example at the top of the second page there is a 1963 piece "The history of Northern Epirus through postage stamps" which strikes me as rather thorough.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Sear...t&setft=true

The interface may be preferable to that of PG. Images are pretty well done for example and there is pretty powerful full-text searching. If you set up a guest account you can save and share results in a personal collection, too.

Yes it looked great,
I joined via Google but alas!

Full PDF available only to authenticated users from HathiTrust partner institutions.