St. Petersburg: The Imperial Post - its postmarks and other postal markings.
by Ian L.G. Baillie and Eric G. Peel, 394 pp. A4 size, softbound with laminated covers, ISBN 0 900246 89 8
Published 2001 by Chancery House Press, Beckenham, England for the British Society of Russian Philately.

A lot of water has flowed down the Neva since a book on the postmarks of St Petersburg was published, and this new book brings up to date, in published form, the data that is available on this interesting subject. The authors, acknowledged experts in this field, possess large, well-organised collections and so are well placed to produce such a book. It is a philatelic fact of life, however, that the best collectors are not always the best authors, and so it is particularly pleasing when advanced collectors publish, for all to see, the results of painstaking research carried out over many years of collecting.

The subject covered by the book is, needless to say, complicated. The vast amount of information in the book has been carefully collated and set down in a logical, even scholarly manner, with references given where needed. The arrangement of the book is such as to make it easy to use for reference, with data being given in tabular form where this will facilitate an understanding of the topic dealt with.

After a detailed study, in four chapters, of the various types of postmark used from the 18th century until the end of the Tsarist era, there is an interesting section devoted to telegraph office marks. The railway post is then well covered in two chapters, one devoted to the "main line" railway stations and the other dealing with the local railways and their sorting marks.

There is a detailed chapter on registration "indicators", that is, markings and labels, and another on other kinds of labels, which of course were often used by the Imperial Russian post office. The book concludes with two chapters on explanatory and miscellaneous marks.

A valuation guide is given at the end of each chapter, and much thought has clearly gone into this aspect of the book - one which many authors carefully avoid!

Reproduction is clear, with all postmarks being shown full-size. Actual covers are illustrated where this helps the reader to understand the subject, and the book is also embellished with a number of relevant illustrations taken from postcards, also engravings from the Illustrated London News. One of the latter is a delightful study, dating from 1856, of a smart-uniformed St Petersburg postman delivering a letter to a winsome maiden.

Anatoly and I readily gave our permission for the authors to reproduce data and illustrations from our books Russian Postmarks: an Introduction and Guide and Russian Railway Postmarks, subject to the usual acknowledgment. Looking through the book it is gratifying to note how useful our books have been in the preparation of this one - they are often referred to and quoted from. However, although acknowledgment is given in the Introduction to other authors, the permission given to use data from our books is not formally acknowledged there. Also, bearing in mind that Anatoly personally drew many of the illustrations that are reproduced in the book, it is a little unfortunate that his name does not appear in the list of names under "Our thanks", and no mention of this source of postmark drawings is given on the following page under section 4 "Illustrations".

Overall this is an excellent book which will quickly become the definitive work on the subject. The authors are to be congratulated on producing a book which every serious collector of St Petersburg postmarks will be pleased to have in his library, and will surely often refer to.

Details of the price etc. of the book can be found in the B.S.R.P. area of the web site. Our member Terry Page is handling the dispatch of the book and will answer any queries: terry.page1@btinternet.com

Philip Robinson