Pulp History

Pulp photos

Pulp magazines for sale in New York in November 1932.

Pulp magazines for sale in New York in November 1932.

Don’t you wish you had a time machine?

Jump in, set the dial, and flash back to the first half of the 20th century. You could pick up new issues of your favorite pulp as they hit the newsstand. Or see the sights of the period.

Thanks to the federal goverment’s interest in documenting its relief efforts during the Great Depression, we can have a glimpse of what it was like to peruse the newsstands for the latest pulp magazines. Photographers from the Farm Security Administration (which later became the Office of War Information) fanned out across the United States to document the recovery. On occasions, their lenses focused on newsstands. Many of the pulp rack photos featured here came from their cameras; others are from journalists, photographers and just everyday snapshot takers.

As part of the redesign and updating of ThePulp.Net, we’ve greatly expanded and upgraded our gallery. We only wish that the photos were available in color.

Do you have a pulp–related photo that you’d like to share? We’d be pleased to add it to the gallery. Please let us know.

The gallery is ordered chronologically, by decades. (Click a thumbnail below to see a larger popup image.)

1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s