Frank Leslie

Frank Leslie 1821-80, American engraver and publisher, b. England. He learned his trade on the Illustrated London News, but in 1848 immigrated to New York City, where in 1855 he began publishing Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, one of the first influential newsweeklies. His real name, Henry Carter, was discarded when his pseudonym, Frank Leslie, became widely known. He inaugurated a method for speedily illustrating current events by dividing his drawings into blocks that could be distributed among a number of engravers and afterward reassembled. His profits and fame were greatest when, during the Civil War, his artists on the battlefields sent back illustrations. They now have great historical value. He went bankrupt in 1877. His second wife, Miriam Florence (Folline) Leslie , continued his business interests after his death.

Leslie, Frank (1821–80), the assumed name of Henry Carter, English‐born engraver and publisher of illustrated journals, emigrated to New York (1848), and there had a great success with such magazines as Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, which he founded in 1876. This was partly due to his method of illustrating current events, dividing his drawings into blocks to be distributed among several engravers and afterward reassembled. In this way, his illustrations reached the public long before those of his competitors.

Miriam F. Leslie (1836–1914), his widow, previously married to Ephraim Squier and subsequently to Oscar Wilde's brother Willie, carried on Leslie's business with great ingenuity and success, even legally adopting his name. She wrote many books, including the travel account California: A Pleasure Trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate (1877), and such feminist pleas as A Social Mirage (1899).