Frank Leslie

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from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper , January 24, 1880

Frank Leslie (born March 29, 1821 in Ipswich , Suffolk , England , † January 10, 1880 in New York City ), formerly Henry Carter , was an English engraver , illustrator and editor of family magazines .

The English origins

Frank Leslie's first woodcut: The coat of arms of Ipswich

Frank Leslie was born on March 29, 1821 in Ipswich as the son of Joseph Carter, the owner of a successful glove manufacturer. Frank Leslie grew up in Ipswich. As a boy he always passed a silversmith's shop on his way to school; this aroused his keen interest in engraving. The designs and letters in particular caught Leslie's attention. At the age of 13 he made his first wood engraving , the coat of arms of his hometown.

At 17, he was sent to his uncle's haberdashery store in London to learn more about his father's business. But every free moment that he could catch from the desolate drudgery at the desk of the dead wood he used for sketching, drawing or engraving. His father, uncle and relatives so discouraged Leslie in his work that he decided to keep it going in secret. He contributed sketches to the Illustrated London News under the name Frank Leslie to ensure that he would remain anonymous and that none of his relatives would see that he was continuing his work. His sketches were so good that at the age of 20 he gave up his job and started working as the head of engraving for the Illustrated London News . He made himself an expert and inventor in his new profession, so he learned to use light and shadow effects in image printing . The process is known today as "overlay".

Henry Carter married for the first time in England and had three sons with his first wife: Harry, Alfred and Scipio. He changed his name to Frank Leslie in 1857 and separated from his wife in 1860.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper , April 1883

The United States

Frank Leslie: The meeker Tragedy

In 1848 Frank Leslie came to the United States, where he worked for Gleason's Pictorial in Boston in 1852 . He discovered that you could speed up the engraving process by breaking a drawing into many different small blocks and dividing the work among several engravers. A job in a large format that would have cost a wood engraver around a month of work could be done by 30 engravers in one day. In 1853 Leslie came to New York City to do woodcuts for PT Barnum's Illustrated News . After the company went bankrupt, Leslie began to publish one of his first magazines : Leslie's Ladies' Gazette of Fashion and Fancy Needlework . He used woodcuts by Leslie & Hooper , a partner he separated from in 1854. This was followed by Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (called Leslie's Weekly) , The Boy's and Girl's Weekly , The Budget of Fun and many more.

The weekly newspaper was approx. 30 × 40 cm and consisted of 16 pages per issue. John Young Foster was the first editor of the Weekly. While only 30 copies of the first edition were printed, in 1897 there were already an estimated 65,000 copies.

They followed a tried and tested mix, covering war, politics, science, travel, discoveries, literature and art in each issue that was enriched with drawings. Since its inception, Frank Leslie's Weekly has published pictures and reports on wars, such as B. from John Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry and the Civil War to the Spanish-American War and the First World War. She also reported on less warlike events, such as the gold rush of 1897 on the Klondike , the laying of the transatlantic cable in 1858 and the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. The amounts came z. B. by Louisa May Alcott , H. Irving Hancock , Helen R. Martin and Ellis Parker Butler . Well-known illustrators also worked for the newspaper, including Albert Berghaus and Norman Rockwell , who later created the covers for the magazine.

Leslies Week was published until 1922. Leslie's illustrations of the American Civil War are still valued today for their historical value. He was a member of the commission of the Paris World Exhibition in 1867 , where he received a prize for his artistic works.

The second wife

Frank Leslie's grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY

When the editor of Frank Leslie's Lady magazine fell ill, Miriam Folline Squier stepped in for him and the sick editor got his salary paid anyway. When the editor died, Squier took over shortly thereafter. She and Leslie got married. It was his second and third marriage. They received many celebrities in their summer home, Interlaken in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 1877 they went on a trip from New York to San Francisco with many friends. Miriam Leslie's book From Gotham to the Golden Gate describes exactly this journey. The cost of this trip and a financial crisis put Leslie and his companies in debt. When Frank Leslie died in 1880, his debt was approximately $ 300,000. His wife took over the business and got it back on track; this went so far that she had her name changed to Frank Leslie in June 1881. She became a prominent feminist and writer. She and her husband are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx .

Web links

Commons : Frank Leslie  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in the Library of Congress

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mrs. Frank Leslie. In: Frances Elizabeth Willard, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (Eds.): A woman of the century; fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life . Moulton, Buffalo, NY, 1893, p. 459.
  2. ^ Mrs. Frank Leslie: California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate, April, May, June, 1877. GW Carleton & Co., New York 1877.
personal data
SURNAME Leslie, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carter, Henry; Carter, H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Engraver, printer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Ipswich , England
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1880
Place of death New York City