Though hardly elegant, these pulp fiction covers are a blast from the past. The titles really cut to the chase. Some of the tag lines are hilarious too. Stories like Hitch-Hike Hussy: “The powerful story of a roadside renegad who’d go wherever you wanted, and as far as you liked…” and my personal favorite, Pirate Wench: “She could outfight, outlove any man in her crew!” I doubt that these books are quality reads, but I can see how the risqué plots were so popular 50 years ago. So retro.

Pulp fiction novels got their name from the cheap wood pulp paper they were printed on. The pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and 60s evolved out of the pulp magazines of earlier decades. These books were sold at drugstores, magazine stands, bus terminals and other places where one might look to purchase cheap, consumable entertainment. The books were small enough to fit in a purse or back pocket and cheap enough to throw away when the reader was through with it. Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction including fantasy, gangster, detective/mystery, science fiction, adventure, westerns, war, sports, railroad, romance, horror/occult. The 1994 film refers to the crime novels popular during this period.

For hundreds of more covers, check out this Flickr page.