Masterpieces of the Mail: new Frajola book, US & World Postal History, 1775–1875

MASTERPIECES OF THE MAIL Art, Rarity, and History in Letters and Covers, 1775–1875 by Richard C. Frajola

Masterpieces of the Mail is a richly illustrated exploration of one hundred years of postal history, told through exceptional original letters and covers from around the world.

This is not a stamp catalog or a conventional survey of postal history. Instead, Richard C. Frajola uses remarkable surviving pieces of mail to show how postal systems actually worked and how they evolved during the century that transformed the movement of written communication.

The story extends from the improvised and often privately operated mails of the late eighteenth century through the great postal reforms of the nineteenth century: prepaid postage, adhesive stamps, changing postal rates, steamship mails, expanding international routes, and increasingly organized national postal systems.

Each artifact is treated as a historical document. Rates, markings, routes and methods of carriage reveal the decisions made by senders, postmasters and carriers as letters traveled by foot, horse, coach, sailing packet, steamboat, rail and private ship.

Among the subjects are the introduction of prepaid postage and the Penny Black in Great Britain; the extraordinary early cantonal issues of Switzerland; classic United States and worldwide postal history; private and government mails; ocean and steamship routes; unusual postal experiments; and many of the great surviving covers of the classic period.

The emphasis throughout is on art, rarity and postal significance. Many of the pieces illustrated are extraordinary examples, but beauty and rarity alone are not the only reasons. The items have been selected because they tell a story and demonstrate how the postal system worked at a particular place and moment in history.

Written by Richard C. Frajola, longtime postal historian, dealer, researcher and author, Masterpieces of the Mail draws upon more than sixty years of collecting and studying…