TIME magazine began in 1923 as the first weekly news magazine in America. Its founders conceived of TIME as a serious news source, but also insisted that it be fun, simply because it covered entertainment news, pop culture and celebrities as well as news.  Its covers maintained a quite strict canon of featuring single individuals until very recent years. This policy has resulted in an inventory of thousands of magazine covers of great interest and delight, a literal gallery of who's who in the world at a particular time. Over the years the popularity of the magazine drove the weekly circulation to over four million issues, only recently, doubtless due to the internet, dropping below four million.  The 2007 statistics show a circulation of 3.4 million weekly. TIME views its name as a backronym (retrofitted acronym) meaning "The International Magazine of Events."

The Man of the Year, now Person of the Year, feature presents an annual cover story that recognizes a person or persons who had the biggest effect on the year's news. Obviously this has sometimes been controversial, particularly when the chosen individual was not a positive influence. 

Albert Einstein was chosen as the Person of the Century (see below).

The following page presents a growing collection of covers beginning in 1930 to the present.  The images of the covers shown here are stock photos; the actual covers in this collection may possess labels, scuffs and other marks of age and use.  From the collector's perspective, such imperfections are time-honoring, and should be a part of the artifact. This collection consists only of covers, not the remainder of the magazine. 

For further information about the collection, or individual covers, please contact

Imagi Gallery

Henri Matisse
20 October 1930
 

Helen Hayes
30 December 1935
 

Thomas E. Dewey
01 February 1937
 

Jean Julius Christian Sibelius
02 December 1937
 

Josef Stalin
20 December 1937
 

William Faulkner
23 January 1939
 

Pablo Picasso
13 February 1939
 

Ginger Rogers
10 April 1939
 

Josef Stalin
01 January 1940

Josef Stalin
04 January 1943
 

Bernard Montgomery
01 February 1943
 

Francisco Franco
18 October 1943
 

Jan Christian Smuts
22 May 1944
 

Lawrence Olivier
08 April 1946
 

Vyacheslav Molotov
19 August 1946
 

Trygve-Lie
25 November 1946
 

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
30 June 1947
 

Heda Hopper
28 July 1947
 

Andrei A. Gromyko
18 August 1947
 

Gregory Peck
12  January 1948

Reinhold Neibuhr
08 March 1948
 

Igor Stravinsky
26 July 1948
 

David Ben-Gurion
16 August 1948
 

J. Robert Oppenheimer
08 November 1948
 

Tallulah Bankhead
22 November 1948

Harry Truman
03 January 1949
 

Cole Porter
31 January 1949

Mao Tse-tung
07 February 1949
 

Louis Armstrong
21 February 1949

Cardinal Mindszenty
14 February 1949
 

Diego Rivera
04 April 1949
 

Princess Margaret
13 June 1949
 

Jawaharlal Nehru
10 October 1949

T. S. Eliot
06 March 1950
 

Betty Hutton
24 April 1950
 

Pablo Picasso
26 June 1950
 

Douglas MacArthur
10 July 1950
 

Syngman Rhee
16 October 1950
 

Mao Tse-tung
11 December 1950

Juan and Evita Peron
21 May 1951
 

King Farouk
10 September 1951
 

Anthony Eden
11 February 1952
 

Fulgencio Batista
21 April 1952
 

Adlai Stevenson
27 October 1952
 

Rosalind Russell
30 March 1953
 

Otto Dibelius
06 April 1953
 

Vyacheslav Molotov
20 April 1953

Audrey Hepburn
07 September 1953

Nikita Khrushchev
30 November 1953
 

Chou En-lai
10 May 1954
 

J. Robert Oppenheimer
14 June 1954
 

Ho Chi Minh
22 November 1954
 

Carl Jung
14 February 1955

Nikita Khrushchev
21 February 1955
 

Chiang Kai-chek
18 April 1955
 

Anthony Eden
23 June 1955

Dwight Eisenhower
04 July 1955
 

Nikolai Bulganin
265 July 1955
 

William Holden
27 February 1956

Sigmund Freud
23 April 1956
 

Nikita Khrushchev
30 April 1956
 

Jawaharlal Nehru
30 July 1956

Duke Ellington
20 August 1956
 

Gamal Abdel Nasser
27 August 1956
 

Richard Nixon
09 December 1957
 

Alec Guiness
21 April 1958
 

Fidel Castro
26 January 1959
 

John F. Kennedy
04 January 1962
 

Tennesee Williams
09 March 1962

Vladimir Lenin
24 April 1964

Martin Luther King
19 March 1965
 

James Pike
11 November 1966
 

Robert Lowell
02 June 1967
 

Robert Kennedy
24 May 1968
 

Robert Kennedy
14 June 1968
 

Spiro Agnew - Richard Nixon
16 August 1968
 

Spiro Agnew
20 September 1968
 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
27 September 1968
 

Lyndon Johnson
08 November 1968
 

Jesse Jackson
06 April 1970
 

Paul McCartney
31 May 1976
 

Jimmy Carter
03 January 1977

Ansel Adams
03 September 1979
 

John Lennon
22 December 1980
 

Lech Walesa
04 January 1982
 

John Updike
18 October 1982
 

Indira Gandhi
12  November 1984

The Rolling Stones
04 September 1989
 

Mikhail Gorbachev
19 February 1990
 

Bill Clinton
16 November 1992
 

Jesse Ventura
16 November 1995

Princess Diana
 15 September 1997
 

Albert Einstein
 31 December 1999
 

Osama Bin Laden
01 October 2001

George Harrison
10 December 2001
 

Yoda
29 April 2002
 

Saddam Hussein
14 April 2003

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad
23 October 2006
 

Barack Obama
12 July 2007

MotherTeresa
03 September 2007
 

Vladimir Putin
31 December 2007

Benazi Bhutto
14 January 2008
 

Hillary Clinton
17 March 2008

Dalai Lama
31 March 2008
 

Nelson Mandela
21 July 2008
 

Barack Obama
17  November  2008

Barack Obama
24  November  2008
 

The Time 100
11 May  2009
 

Michelle Obama
01 June  2009
 

Michael Jackson
07 July 2009
 

Dick Cheney - George Bush
03 August 2009
 

Edward Kennedy
07 September 2009
 

Jay Leno
14  September 2009
 

Imagi Gallery
 

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