Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine
Frank Leslie (March 29, 1821 – January 10, 1880) was an English-born American engraver, illustrator, and publisher of family periodicals.
In 1848 he came to the United States, in 1852 working for Gleason's Pictorial in Boston. He discovered he could accelerate the engraving process significantly by dividing a drawing into many small blocks and distributing the work among many engravers. A job on a large-format wood engraving which might have taken a month for a single wood engraver to complete, could be completed in a day by 30 engravers.[3]
In 1853,[3] he arrived in New York City to engrave woodcuts for P. T. Barnum's short-lived Illustrated News. After its failure, he began publishing the first of his many illustrated journalistic ventures, Frank Leslie's Ladies' Gazette of Fashion and Fancy Needlework, with good woodcuts by Leslie & Hooper, a partnership which dissolved in 1854.[4] The New York Journal soon followed, with Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (1855) (called Leslie's Weekly), The Boy's and Girl's Weekly, The Budget of Fun, and many others. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, which included news as well as fiction, survived until 1922.[5]
Illustrations made by Leslie and his artists on the battlefield during the American Civil War are well regarded for their historical value. He was commissioner to the Paris Exhibition of 1867 and received a prize there for his artistic services.
Second wife
When the editor of Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine had fallen ill, the then Miriam Folline Squier volunteered to fill in, and the ill editor still received the salary. The editor died, and Mrs. Squier took on the position permanently; shortly thereafter, about 1874, she and Leslie were married. It was his second marriage, and her third. Their summer home was in Saratoga Springs, New York, where they entertained many notables. In 1877, they undertook a lavish train trip from New York to San Francisco in the company of many friends. Miriam Leslie wrote her book From Gotham to the Golden Gate telling the story of this trip. The expense of this trip, and a business depression left Leslie's business badly in debt.
When Frank Leslie died in 1880, the debts amounted to $300,000, and his will was contested. Miriam Leslie took the business in hand and put it on a paying basis, even going so far as to having her name legally changed to Frank Leslie in June 1881. She was a notable feminist and author in her own right. Both his and her remains are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Leslie
