Great British Booklets – Issued 1904 to Date
The first Booklet available from Post Offices was a Two Shilling Edward 7 Booklet issued in 1904.

Early booklets were all stapled together, until 1917 when stitching was introduced. Quite simply, they were sown together.
Since 1917, there has been only one other booklet that was stapled and this was one version of the 1969 £1 Stamps For Cooks booklet. The other version is stitched. The stapled booklet sells for about 60 times that of the stitched one and is rare.

Most early booklets issued before the Pre decimal Machins can be found with panes where both Upright and Inverted Watermarks can be found. This applies also to the Sideways watermarks, as these can be left or right facing.

From 1913 to 1943 most booklets had an edition number and many collectors try and collect every edition.

In 1943 the edition number was replaced by an issue date. These are again collected by collectors. Many of the early booklets carried Sponsored Advertising either inside the booklet itself on the interleafs or on the Booklet covers. Advertising on the covers ceased in 1942, but was still allowed inside into the early 1970's.

In 1968 the Post Office produced their first themed related issues, choosing Ships, Buildings and Explorers to kick off with. Stitched booklets continue to be produced to this day, as all Presitige booklets are stitched. Lower value stitched booklets though were phased out in 1974 to be replaced by what are termed as folded booklets. Quite simple, the outer cover is a folded piece of lightweight card. These issues are where the theme idea really took off and many different themes were illustrated on covers. Most forming a series of booklets.

1978 saw the first Christmas Booklet and this issue has continued in various formats to the present day.
1989 saw the first Greetings Booklet, these was produced until 1998 and a new Red cover booklet starts it's life, these are commonly known as Window Booklets, because the first issues had a clear plastic window on the cover showing the stamps inside. The correct term though is Barcode Booklets, as the name implies, they all have barcodes on the back.

1993 saw the first Self Adhesive Stamps issued by thr Post office and these were in a booklet of 20 x 1st Class stamps. It wasn't until 2001 that the next self Adhesive booklet was issued and now all booklets except the Prestige Series are issued as Self Adhesive.

Prestige Bookls are themed and normally contain four or five panes of various valued stamps with additional pages of text and pictures relating to the featured theme. Prestige books tend to be the source of the more scarcer modern Elizabeth stamps, as it is the only place where these stamps can be found and in many cases only contains one stamp per book.