Leonard Upcott Gill

Gill was thus a publisher, printer, author and a patentee. When he died in 1919, The Times awarded him a long obituary notice (11 March 1919, p. 13, col. e) calling him “the builder of one of the most extensive printing and publishing concerns in London”. His uncle had been Edward William Cox (1809–1879), lawyer and publisher, who had founded The Law Times in 1843, revived The Field in 1854, and who was also the proprietor, from 1862, of The Queen (see ODNB), on both of whose early staff lists Gill was included. Gill was also, from 1868, the manager of The Country, a cheap edition of Cox’s more expensive The Field, so publishing was in Gill’s blood. The Times suggested that The Bazaar was perhaps Gill’s most important achievement, noting that “most of the many books published by Mr Gill were first published in serial form in The Bazaar.Popularity and practical utility were theessential features of all these articles”. Gill, above all, seems to have catered for the late Victorian and Edwardian collector. His is also a respected name in stamp collecting www.abps.org.uk/Home/Who_Was_Who.

GILL, Leonard Upcott 1846-1919. Published at 170 Strand, London, The Bazaar, Exchange and Mart for which RB Earée and other philatelists acted at various times as philatelic editors. He also published 'Postage Stamps and their Collection' by O Firth [1897], 'A History of British Postmarks' by JH Daniels [1898], and 'The Adhesive Postage Stamps of Europe' by WAS Westoby, 2 vols [1898 and 1900] (based on articles which had appeared in the Bazaar). The Commissioners of Inland Revenue took legal proceedings against Gill for being in possession of a printing block for illustrating a current Cape of Good Hope stamp in Firth's book. The outcome was that most of the illustrations of colonial stamps in the book had to be defaced.