Sexology, Gernsback's serious magazine about Sex

In the early 1930's Hugo Gernsback introduced yet another magazine. This time the title and subject stunned the American reading public. SEXOLOGY, THE MAGAZINE OF SEX SCIENCE, sought to bring the results of modern science to a general public that had not yet crawled out from under the Victorian pseudo-moral posture of never speaking publicly about sex. A little implied prurience probably helped sell magazines, too.

Here are some cover images from across its run, including a number of covers from much more recent issues than we normally would show. SEXOLOGY went from straight text to pictorials, but never spent much of anything on the cover art, and it is interesting to see what an art director can do with $nothing.