Denmark’s Fri-Correspondance Kort, David A. Macdonald, 8¼ by 11¾ inches, soft covers, stapled, 42 pages, self published, Aberdeen U.K., 2003. Available from the author for $12 postpaid, 60 Earlspark Drive, Bieldside, Aberdeen AB15 9AH, United Kingdom.

This is a study of the business reply-paid cards of Denmark, used from 1883 to 1919. Much of the material appeared in the author’s series of articles in Scandinavian Contact, journal of the Scandinavia Philatelic Society of Great Britain. As background, Macdonald describes early postal stationery of Denmark having imprinted business addresses.

The business reply-paid postal cards were introduced by the Danish Post Office in 1883 and the competing Copenhagen Local Post in 1886. The sender paid no postage as it was collected on receipt by the business firm.

Few of these cards survive, especially used ones, most likely because commercial firms destroyed such correspondence after it served its purpose. Macdonald classifies the cards into four basic series based on design features. Some cards were issued in requisition books of 24 cards. Many cards are illustrated with details of the colors of the printing inks and the card papers. The postage paid by the business was based on the quantity of cards delivered at any one time, and also relates to the local letter rate at the time. The Danish Post terminated the Fri-Correspondance Kort services in 1919.

In a series of appendices, the author lists the firms that used the service, by each of the four series, and includes their license numbers. Other appendices list the Copenhagen local post cards and some transitional period cards. A list of references and some illustrations of a requisition book conclude this monograph.

One distracting feature is that the book pages are thin to the point that some of the print bleeds through from the reverse side. The author is to be commended on exploring a little known aspect of postal stationery, which has previously received scant attention in the philatelic literature.

Alan Warren