Diamonds and Deadlines

January 1, 2022
An outsize, obnoxious, 19th-century self-made millionaire is restored to her rightful place. 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.

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January 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.

Starred review from March 15, 2022
Louisa May Alcott admirers will know Frank Leslie as the publisher of the thrillers she secretly wrote to support her family, but she also worked with Miriam Squier, editor for Frank Leslie's Lady's Magazine, a forgotten trailblazer Prioleau reclaims in this eye-widening biography. Ambitious and pragmatic, Miriam claimed to be of noble Huguenot descent, when, in fact, she was most likely the daughter of a slave owner and an enslaved woman, growing up poor, brainy, and ambitious in New York and New Orleans. Miriam was in her second disastrous marriage when she met Frank Leslie and the two began a lavishly scandalous affair. They eventually married, becoming a Gilded Age power couple of nearly psychotic excess as Miriam helped manage their complicated, increasingly endangered publishing empire, taking full charge after Frank's death. 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. A revolutionary innovator and leader, writer, world traveler, dynamo, and phoenix, the "Empress of Journalism" weathered barrages of betrayals and "masterminded" triumphant comebacks with dignity, courage, fortitude, and vision, ultimately leaving her fortune to the women's suffrage movement. High praise to Prioleau for so vividly and incisively telling the whole dramatic story of this "titanic vanguard figure."

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