St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha Philatelic Society

The St. Helena Philatelic Study Group Newsletter appeared on the philatelic scene in April 1977, as the voluntary initiative of Vivian W. Finne. It and its direct successors have continued in unbroken series as the quarterly official journal of what is now known as the St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Philatelic Society. Since the January 1993 issue, it has carried International Standard Serial Number (lSSN) 1065-6979. That first issue was a modest 8.5"x11" mimeographed two-page effort, which concluded with the question of "Who will do the next one?" The challenge was taken up by Russell V. Skavaril, whose subsequent 12-year stewardship as editor set the basic standards for the journal. His first six-page number, offset printed from camera ready copy, appeared with a dateline of July 1977. It was followed three months later by an eight-page issue, and then by an eleven-page number in January 1978. The periodical has held to that same quarterly schedule ever since, while continuing to grow in size and scope. Its name changed to St. Helena and Dependencies Philatelic Society Newsletter with Vol. II, No. 1 (January 1978), reflecting the somewhat wider scope of the organization and its journal. The current name, South Atlantic Chronicle, appeared with the July 1986 (Vol. X, No. 3) issue. The present typeset, glossy-covered format was introduced in July 1988, coincident with Everett Parker's assumption of the editorship.
Various supplements have been issued during the course of publication, predominantly during the 1978-1988 period, consisting primarily of society auction catalogues, membership directories, treasurer's reports and similar internal matters. They are not titled as supplements, and for the most part merely travelled through the mails under the journal's aegis. Therefore, no attempt has been made to identify them and assign them to individual numbers of the journal. One set of supplements deserves mention, however: a six-page Cumulative Index to St. Helena and Dependencies Philatelic Society Newsletter (through Vol. II, No. 4, the October 1978 edition), compiled by Joseph J.Frasketi, Jr., was released with the January 1979 issue of the newsletter, while a similar eight-page index (for Volume Numbers III and IV), also by Frasketi, was issued with the January 1981 newsletter, followed by a six-page index to Vols. V and VI released with the April 1983 issue.

In January of 2006, in conjunction with the production of the society's publication "Thirty Years of St. Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Philately, 1976 - 2006", it was thought that an updated index, combining the work of the previous compilers, would be worthwhile, and this web site is the result.
Since then, the index has been continuously updated as each journal is published.First introduced in 2007, the index was updated in 2021 to allow users to select an article and to have the issue containing that article displayed or downloaded by selecting the item in the "Published" column: users thus have access to every article ever published by the society.