Corporate Circulation was a department of Time Inc. that supervised marketing of subscriptions for all of the company's magazines which included in-house creation of promotions as well as dealing with outside advertising agencies. The department existed in two distinct periods; the first was from at least 1939 with P.I. (Pierrepont Isham) Prentice as Director from at least 1939 to 1942 and Francis Pratt serving in that role from at least 1944 to 1951, when the department was broken up to allow executives to concentrate their efforts on fewer magazines, or a single one, rather than having responsibility for all of them. This was purely a change in organizational structure with no positions eliminated so records continued to be produced by the same people with the same subject matter, which accounts for the presence in the collection of records post-dating the breakup of the unified Corporate Circulation department.

This reorganization was reversed in 1972 when the Corporate Circulation department was recreated to increase efficiency. The directorship was held by Kelso Sutton from 1972 to 1975, Ira R. "Ike" Slagter from 1975 to 1978, Lawrence Crutcher from 1978 to 1981, Christopher Meigher from 1981 to 1983, and, after a brief return by Crutcher in that year, Richard "Chip" Angle from 1983 to 1985. During Slagter's directorship some magazine concepts were studied and developed but ultimately never published. In 1985 the second incarnation of the department was divided again into two parts reporting to Chris Meigher and Bob Miller, respectively. The two parts ultimately worked underneath the umbrella of the Magazine Group.

The collection includes correspondence and contracts with foreign business entities to market and sell Time Inc. magazines abroad, many of which post-date the break-up of the first incarnation of Corporate Circulation. The most common correspondent on Time. Inc's side in these files is Vince Canavan, Credit Manager. It is likely that when the second incarnation of Corporate Circulation was created, it inherited these records.