[Sexology] Large Collection of Books from the Personal Library of Virginia Johnson of Masters & Johnson

New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc., 1825-1995. Edition and size vary. Collection of 56 titles (in 94 volumes) consisting of books from the working reference libraries of the Masters and Johnson Institute, the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation (its predecessor), as well as books from the personal libraries of both Virginia E. Johnson and William H. Masters. An array of subjects are covered and include medical texts, historical psychology texts, their own works in translation, etc. A full listing is available on request.

William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the real-life people behind the hit Showtime TV show, Masters of Sex, worked during the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, when they pioneered the study of human sexual behavior. In their pivotal 1966 book Human Sexual Response, they worked to challenge the status quo of human romantic relationships. The duo worked together from 1957 to 1994 and during that time they married (1971), divorced (1993), and still continued to work together. In 1994, their non-profit institute, The Masters and Johnson Institute, formerly the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation, closed after the retirement of Masters.

Pioneering researcher Virginia Johnson was born Virginia Eshelman in 1925 in Springfield, Missouri. She attended Drury College from the age of 16 but dropped out to work at the Missouri State Insurance office for a couple of years. She later returned to school at the Kansas Conservatory of Music to study music, appearing on radio station KWTO as a country artist under the name Virginia Gibson. She later moved to St. Louis, Missouri, as a business writer at the St. Louis Daily Record, where she also attended Washington University, intending to earn a degree in sociology. It was here that she first crossed paths with William H. Masters. He was there as a researcher at the University, and she became his research assistant. Though she never completed a full undergraduate degree, her time with Masters tied her to revolutionizing the way humans interact. They would spend the next 37 years researching and writing about human sexual behavior at their Masters and Johnson Institute. After the retirement of Masters and the closing of the institute, Johnson worked on her own at the Virginia Johnson Masters Learning Center in Creve Coeur, Missouri. She died on July 24, 2013.

The collection also includes a signed black and white photo of the pair, ca. 1978, by Japanese American fashion photographer Hiro, and an original watercolor cartoon by Lee Lorenz of Cupid reading their recently published book Human Sexual Inadequacy, published in Playboy in 1971.

Property from the Collection of Scott Johnson

This lot is located in Philadelphia.

Virginia Johnson, thence by descent in the family

[Sexology] Large Collection of Books from the Personal Library of Virginia Johnson of Masters & Johnson