01/31/2022
Historian Prioleau (Swoon ) chronicles in this immersive biography the rags-to-riches story of publisher Miriam (Follin) Leslie (1836–1914). Raised by her debt-riddled father in New Orleans and New York City, Miriam was “illegitimate and probably biracial,” according to Prioleau, who suggests that her birth mother was “most likely” one of the women enslaved by her father. “A streetwise survivor armed with brains, cunning, nerve, and Napoleonic drive and hubris,” Miriam was married to anthropologist Ephraim G. Squier when she began an affair with Frank Leslie, owner of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and other publications. They married in 1873, and when Leslie died in 1880, he left his entire estate, including the faltering publishing company, to her. Prioleau recounts Miriam’s editorial breakthroughs, such as the publication of the first “pictorial record” of President Garfield’s assassination in 1881, as well as her colorful personal life, including her disastrous marriage to Oscar Wilde’s older brother, Willie, and her affair with the poet Joaquin Miller. In her will, Miriam left the bulk of her fortune to suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, who used the money to help secure passage of the 19th Amendment. Prioleau skillfully untangles the mysteries of Miriam’s early life and vividly evokes the era. This entertaining biography restores a remarkable woman to her rightful place in American history. (Mar.)
[An] eye-widening biography . . . Prioleau tells Miriam’s roller-coaster tale with thrilling precision within the finely rendered context of evolving newspaper and magazine publishing, the struggles for worker and women’s rights, and historical events propelled by outrageous charlatans that are disturbingly relevant to the present. . . . High praise to Prioleau for so vividly and incisively telling the whole dramatic story of this ‘titanic vanguard figure.’
"What a rollicking, rollercoaster read! The astonishing Mrs. Frank Leslie has found her perfect champion in biographer Betsy Prioleau. Prioleau's meticulous, engaging account of the dazzling life of one of America’s most splendid and spirited entrepreneurs, a woman of tremendous dynamism, bursts with color and excitement. With great skill, Prioleau describes the resourcefulness, magnetism, and charm of a woman who pushed herself to the center of a dazzling, debauched social milieu, populated by an extraordinary cast of misfits, arrivistes, and the unimaginable wealthy, whose 'carnival excesses' she then documented in her sensational newspapers and magazines. Mrs. Frank Leslie, a dazzling pioneer of nineteenth century journalism and publishing, reinvented herself multiple times, made and lost several fortunes, and stopped society in its tracks time and time again, most notably in the way she disposed of her fortune. Prioleau's pacy, gripping narrative, sharp-witted asides, and skill at invoking the opulent spectacles, scents, and sounds of fin de siècle New York, London, and Paris, propelled me through switchback, cinematic chapters with wonderful cliff-hanger endings. Fun, fascinating, and gloriously gossipy."
author of Wilde's Women and The Life and Loves of Eleanor Fitzsimons
"Diamonds and Deadlines is the deftly told account of a bold, dazzling woman who used sex, deceit, and her publishing empire to become a powerful, bold-faced celebrity during New York's Gilded Age. Prioleau's skillful narrative hand and intimate historical detail do justice to Miriam Leslie, resurrecting her from all-but-forgotten figure to an emblem of feminism."
"Riveting. . . . Betsy Prioleau has drawn a fascinating portrait of a self-made, up-from-poverty publishing tycoon, the irrepressible Miriam Leslie, whose exploits scandalized society during the Gilded Age even as she shaped modern culture with her popular magazines."
An appropriately twisty tale of someone trying to outrun her origins. . . . Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for.
The New York Times Book Review
"Ms. Prioleau brings this forgotten woman vividly to life. . . . Along the way, she provides a wider picture of the society Miriam inhabited, with its extremes of affluence and penury. . . . Part of the pleasure of the book is the Kim Kardashian factor—reading about a woman who breaches social norms and succeeds on her own terms."
"The fascinating true story of the first publishing titan in America—the forgotten Mrs. Frank Leslie, a Gilded Age journalistic powerhouse who led a life of intrigue, scandal, and grit. Diamonds and Deadlines takes us inside a world of larger-than-life characters, cinematic scenes, and dramatic exposés. Mrs. Leslie, a legend in her time, was not who she seemed. Betsy Prioleau restores this fabulous, pioneering woman to her rightful place in history with novelistic flair and zest."
"The fascinating true story of the first publishing titan in America—the forgotten Mrs. Frank Leslie, a Gilded Age journalistic powerhouse who led a life of intrigue, scandal, and grit. Diamonds and Deadlines takes us inside a world of larger-than-life characters, cinematic scenes, and dramatic exposés. Mrs. Leslie, a legend in her time, was not who she seemed. Betsy Prioleau restores this fabulous, pioneering woman to her rightful place in history with novelistic flair and zest."—Arianna Huffington, founder & CEO, Thrive Global Meryl Gordon, New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Astor Regrets, The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, Diamonds and Deadlines is the deftly told account of a bold, dazzling woman who used sex, deceit, and her publishing empire to become a powerful, bold-faced celebrity during New York's Gilded Age. Prioleau's skillful narrative hand and intimate historical detail do justice to Miriam Leslie, resurrecting her from all-but-forgotten figure to an emblem of feminism."—Esther Crain, founder of Ephemeral New York and author of The Gilded Age in New York, 1870–1910 Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde's Women and The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit The New York Times Book Review The Wall Street Journal Publishers Weekly Kirkus Booklist STARRED Review
Brings this forgotten woman vividly to life…Along the way, she provides a wider picture of the society Miriam inhabited, with its extremes of affluence and penury.”
High praise to Prioleau for so vividly and incisively telling the whole dramatic story of this ‘titanic vanguard figure.’”
Booklist (starred review)
Her story sparkles, as intoxicating as a champagne fountain that somebody else is paying for.”
New York Times Book Review
2021-12-09
Born to a family of "bounders and bankrupts" in New Orleans, her unknown biological mother likely Black, though her biraciality was never acknowledged, Miriam Florence Squier Leslie (1836-1914) clawed her way up the social structure to become an important figure in publishing, managing several magazines she inherited from her third husband, Frank Leslie. She also wrote essays and books. As Prioleau makes clear, class divisions in America were extreme during Leslie's lifetime, which encompassed the Haymarket Riots, the Johnstown flood, and the Great Depression. Yet by deploying her inimitable blend of intellect, drive, greed, sex appeal, deceit, and inferiority complex–fueled snobbery, Leslie leapt the chasm between poor and rich and amassed a huge fortune, largely spent on Gilded Age excess in lodgings, attire, and hospitality. No matter what she did—and she did plenty—this world-class striver was never embraced by the upper crust. She avoided philanthropy, preferring to revile rather than lend a hand to the poor. Yet in a brilliant final stroke that balances her more foolish and despicable choices, she left her fortune to the women's movement, funding the work that helped to pass the 19th Amendment. Prioleau, whose earlier works have focused on great seducers and seductresses, is a perfect biographer of Leslie, who was mentored by no less than Lola Montez in the application of womanly charms. “A self-mythologizer,” writes the author, “she saw herself as the legendary Lilith, the immortal gadfly and moral truant, who defied Adam’s dominion and founded her own paradise, filled with ‘jinn’ lovers and a race of ‘glorious,’ ‘rebellious daughters’ ‘claiming the New World as their special domain.’ ” The author uses anachronistic vocabulary and peppers her sentences with words and phrases quoted from source documents, giving the narrative an amusing period feel.
They just don't make characters like this anymore. Kudos to Prioleau for her gallant historical rescue mission.
